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“These calls for a boycott are baseless and must end immediately, as well as the attacks on our country. It is a radical minority that is behind them,” said the French Foreign Ministry in a statement published on Sunday afternoon.
The statement also notes that in recent days there have been several calls for a boycott, mainly of French food products in several Middle Eastern countries. Demonstrations against France have also been called in these countries due to the display of so-called Muhammad cartoons.
In Kuwait, for example a retail chain has recalled its French products and strict demands have been made in Saudi Arabia to boycott French products.
The Muhammad cartoons were shown to a French school class almost two weeks ago in connection with Professor Samuel Paty giving a lesson on freedom of expression. Students who did not want to see the images were offered to leave the classroom or were asked to close their eyes before the images were displayed. A few days later, Paty was stabbed to death and then her head was cut off. The alleged perpetrator, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, was shot and killed by the police in connection with the intervention against the act.
Even before the assassination, French President Emmanuel Macron had criticized “Islamist separatism” and said that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis throughout the world.” After the assassination, he said that “Islamists want our future.”
Demonstration in Istanbul against Emmanuel Macron.
Photo: Yasin Akgul / AFP
On Saturday, the Turkish president raised Recep Tayyip Erdogan set the tone, saying that Emmanuel Macron would need a “psychic test.” Something that Erdogan also repeated on Sunday. At that time, France had already called its Turkish ambassador home for consultations.
EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell condemned Erdogan’s statement on Sunday, calling it unacceptable.
But according to Erdogan’s collaborator Fahrettin Altun, “insulting cartoons” of the Prophet Muhammad are used to intimidate Muslims in Europe, on the pretext that it is about freedom of expression.
“Everything we see about Muslims in European culture today is eerily similar to the demonization of European Jews in the 1920s,” he wrote on Twitter.
Even the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan attacks Macron. The French president should have shown restraint rather than creating further polarization and marginalization that “inevitably leads to radicalization,” Khan wrote on Twitter.
“It is regrettable that he has chosen to promote Islamophobia by attacking Islam rather than terrorists who commit acts of violence, be they Muslims, white power activists or ideological Nazis,” wrote Khan.
It also urges Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to introduce strict anti-Islamophobia guidelines against Holocaust denial or distortion.
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