Calls to boycott French products are growing in the Middle East and the Islamic world after France President Emmanuel Macron said his country “will not give up cartoons” depicting the Prophet Mohammad and ‘Islamists will never have France’s future’!
Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Macron, saying the French President needed ‘mental checks’ over his attitude towards Muslims.
Macron’s remarks came while paying homage to Samual Paty, a French teacher who was beheaded outside his school on 16 October.
47-year-old Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet to his students in a civics class on freedom of expression, which had angered many Muslim parents. He was killed on his way home by an 18-year-old Chechnya-born man.
The suspect was shot dead by the police minutes after the attack.
‘Mental checks’
On Saturday, around 200 people protested outside the residence of France’s ambassador to Israel, carrying banners in Arabic in support of the Prophet.
On social networking site Twitter, #boycottfranceproducts was trending with over 82,000 tweets.
Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Macron, saying the French President needed ‘mental checks’ over his attitude towards Muslims.
“What is the problem of this person called Macron with Muslims and Islam? Macron needs treatment on a mental level. What else can be said to a head of state who does not understand freedom of belief and who behaves in this way to millions of people living in his country who are members of a different faith? First of all, have mental checks.”, he said during a televised address.
Jordan’s foreign ministry also condemned the continued publication of the cartoons insulting the Prophet “under the pretext of freedom of expression”.
It also expressed “extreme dissatisfaction with these practices, which are harmful to the feelings of nearly 2 billion Muslims”, in a tweet.
France has called a boycott of its products in several Middle Eastern and Islamic countries “baseless”, saying the move is being perpetuated by “a radical minority”.
Bolstered by social media, the campaign asks Arabs and Muslims not to buy French products in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s statements this month describing Islam as a religion in crisis.
Macron has drawn further anger from some Muslims for backing the publishing of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the spirit of “freedom of expression”.
The prophet is deeply revered by Muslims and any kind of visual depiction is forbidden in Islam. The caricatures in question are seen by them as offensive and Islamophobic because they are perceived to link Islam with terrorism.
