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MOSCOW: Retired mixed martial arts champion Khabib Nurmagomedov on Friday (October 30) denounced French President Emmanuel Macron as a “brute” and invoked God’s wrath against him.
Nurmagomedov, one of the most popular Muslim athletes in the world, issued a strong statement against Macron for his defense of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad based on the right to freedom of expression.
“May God mutilate the face of this brute and that of all his followers who offend the feelings of more than 1.5 billion Muslims under the slogan of freedom of expression,” the 32-year-old lightweight world champion wrote in a publication on Instagram after announcing his retirement earlier this week.
“May God humiliate you in this life and the next,” added Nurmagomedov, who hails from the Muslim-majority southern region of Dagestan in Russia.
His publication, accompanied by a photo of Macron with a black shoe on his face, has accumulated more than 1.9 million likes on his account that has 25 million followers.
On Friday, several dozen protesters gathered outside the French embassy in Moscow with posters and cartoons of Macron. They were seen burning a photo of the French leader.
Macron defended freedom of expression and condemned Islamist violence this month after an extremist beheaded a teacher in a Paris suburb who showed students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on freedom of expression.
Macron’s stance on the cartoons, as well as comments on Islam, have sparked a backlash across the Muslim world.
After a knife-wielding man killed three people in a church in southern France on Thursday, Macron vowed that the country “will not abandon our values.”
Earlier this week, the leader of the Muslim-majority Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, accused the French leader of provoking Muslims and compared him to a “terrorist.”
