FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron has said he understood and respected the feelings aroused by caricatures of the Last Prophet (PBUH) in a bid to calm tension with Muslims in France and around the world but vowed never to accept the violence. The French President spoke to an Arab TV Channel when he issued these comments, hinting that he sought to calm flaring tension with Muslims around the world. However, he lashed out at “lies” that the French State was behind the caricatures.
We have been emphasizing in these columns that France enjoyed best of relations with the Muslim world and Macron was spoiling this relationship because of lack of proper vision and understanding of the issues involved. No one in the world with a saner mind would support violence but what about those who deliberately provoke others on violence. His insistence to equate the issue of freedom of speech to publication of blasphemous caricatures is also reflective of his anti-Muslim mindset as he is not willing to give any weight to actions that injure feelings of over 1.5 billion followers of Islam. Macron has talked about ‘confusion’, he believes, has been fed by “many media and some political and religious leaders that these caricatures are in a way the project or the creation of the French Government or the President”. There is no confusion in this regard as these sacrilegious cartoons have neither been produced by the French Government or the President but official patronage of those doing so makes things murkier. Macron is condemning violence but why is he reluctant to condemn those who are fanning extremism and inciting people to violence. Instead of hiding behind lame excuses, the French President should review his Government’s overall approach to the sensitive issue.
