Anti-Macron fury rages across the Muslim world

The Muslim world renewed its anger at Emmanuel Macron today after the French president remained unbowed by Thursday’s terror attack in Nice and vowed that ‘we will not give any ground’ on freedom of expression. 

Macron has become the focal point of Islamic fury after defending Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which led to a teacher’s murder in the Paris suburbs two weeks ago. 

After three people were murdered in Nice yesterday in the latest in a long line of terror attacks in France, Macron said that France will not ‘give up on our values’ despite fury at the offensive caricatures.  

Today, thousands poured out of Friday prayer services to join anti-French protests in Pakistan while the French flag was set on fire in Afghanistan and others voiced their anger in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia by burning effigies of Macron and stamping on pictures of his face. 

Turkey has led the condemnation of France but a spokesman for Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought to distance him from the violence in Nice on Thursday, saying that ‘we owe no apology to anyone for expressing our strong opposition to racism and xenophobia’.  

Erdogan’s press aide, Fahrettin Altun, condemned the Nice attack but said that ‘such senseless violence has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims’. 

‘We will continue to confront any politician who insults our religion and values,’ he said. 

‘We feel we owe no apology to anyone for expressing our strong opposition to racism and xenophobia. We categorically deny any effort to associate us with any kind of violence.’

Macron has launched an impassioned defence of freedom of expression and described teacher Samuel Paty as a ‘quiet hero’ after he was murdered for showing the Prophet Mohammed cartoons to his class. 

But Muslim leaders have said that the caricatures are taking free speech too far and accused France of promoting an anti-Islam agenda.  

Tens of thousands of Muslims protested in Bangladesh on Friday, chanting slogans such as ‘boycott French products’ and carrying banners calling Macron ‘the world’s biggest terrorist’ as they marched in Dhaka.   

In Pakistan, thousands of Muslims in Pakistan poured out of prayer services to voice their anger at Macron after celebrating the Mawlid, the festival marking the birthday of the Prophet. 

An estimated 2,000 worshippers took to the streets in the eastern city of Lahore where crowds led by Islamic parties chanted anti-France slogans and clogged major roads en route to a Sufi shrine. 

In Multan, a city in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, thousands burned an effigy of Macron and demanded that Pakistan sever ties with France.

More gatherings were planned for later Friday in Pakistan, including the capital, Islamabad, where police were out in force to prevent possible demonstrations outside the French embassy. 

Other protests, largely organized by Islamists, are expected across the region, including in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

In Afghanistan, members of the Islamist party Hezb-i-Islami set the French flag ablaze.

Its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, warned Macron that if he doesn’t ‘control the situation, we are going to a third world war and Europe will be responsible.’ 

On Thursday, knife-wielding Tunisian terrorist Brahim Aoussaoui killed three people after bursting into a Catholic church in Nice, wounding several others before he was shot and arrested.   

France’s chief anti-terrorism prosecutor said the attacker had arrived in Europe on September 20 in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia that is a main landing point for migrants from Africa. 

Also on Thursday, a Saudi man stabbed and lightly wounded a security guard at the French consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, prompting France to urge its citizens there to be on ‘high alert.’ 

Macron, 42, has deployed thousands of soldiers to protect important sites such as places of worship and schools, and the country’s security alert is at its highest level.   

Over the past week, protests and calls to boycott French products have spread rapidly from Bangladesh to Pakistan to Kuwait. Social media has been pulsing with anti-France hashtags. 

Muslim leaders, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in particular, have loudly criticised France for what they see as the government’s provocative and anti-Muslim stance. 

Erdogan took particular exception after he himself was lampooned in a Charlie Hebdo cartoon which showed him lifting a woman’s skirt to look at her naked backside.  

The Turkish president called the cartoonists ‘scoundrels’ and accused the West of wanting to ‘relaunch the Crusades’ by attacking Islam after the image appeared on the front of this week’s magazine. 

Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani also took aim at France by warning that insulting the Prophet would encourage ‘violence and bloodshed’.  

Meanwhile Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan called for an end to ‘attacks on Islam’, saying the West should be willing to treat blasphemy in the same way as Holocaust denial. 

And in Cairo, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said freedom of expression should stop if it offended more than 1.5billion people, referring to the number of Muslims.

European leaders have come to Macron’s defence in his row with Erdogan, with Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab this week calling on NATO allies to stand together in defence of tolerance and free speech. 

‘The UK stands in solidarity with France and the French people in the wake of the appalling murder of Samuel Paty,’ Raab said in a veiled rebuke to Turkey. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel had defended Macron after Erdogan suggested he needed ‘mental checks’. 

‘They are defamatory comments that are completely unacceptable, particularly against the backdrop of the horrific murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist fanatic,’ Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.