Mon 26 October 2020:
Calls to boycott French goods are growing around the world after President Emmanuel Macron’s comments against Islam and Muslims.
Macron on Wednesday accused Muslims of separatism and vowed not to give up cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammed.
Saudi Arabia Council of Senior Scholars
Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, the Council of Senior Scholars, said on Sunday that insulting prophets only serves extremists who wish to spread hatred among societies, state news agency SPA reported.
Read more:
FRANCE URGES MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES TO STOP BOYCOTT OF FRENCH PRODUCTS
FRANCE RECALLS ENVOY TO TURKEY AFTER ERDOGAN QUESTIONS EMMANUEL MACRON’S MENTAL HEALTH
#boycottfrance: GULF TRADE GROUPS LAUNCHED BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN AGAINST FRENCH PRODUCTS
PM IMRAN KHAN ACCUSES MACRON OF ATTACKING ISLAM AND “DELIBERATELY PROVOKING” MUSLIMS
French president needed “mental checks”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday slammed Macron over his policies toward Muslims, saying that the French president needed “mental checks.”
“What can one say about a head of state who treats millions of members from different faith groups this way: first of all, have mental checks,” Erdogan said in a televised address.
Calls to boycott French products and protests against President Emmanuel Macron continue around the world after he criticised Islam and vowed not to “give up cartoons” depicting Prophet Muhammed. Here’s the latest for Sunday, October 25: pic.twitter.com/eq4OFsRbI7
— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) October 25, 2020
Erdogan says ‘Macron needs mental health treatment,’ asking ‘What’s Macron’s problem with Muslims?’ over the projection of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on buildings in France pic.twitter.com/IW2KKbFyQh
— TRT World (@trtworld) October 24, 2020
Macron tweets in Arabic
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted in Arabic on Sunday saying the nation would never “give in” and that it respected “all differences in the spirit of peace,” amid controversy over the use of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a French school class on freedom of expression whose teacher was then beheaded by someone Macron labeled an “Islamist.”
لا شيئ يجعلنا نتراجع، أبداً.
نحترم كل أوجه الاختلاف بروح السلام. لا نقبل أبداً خطاب الحقد وندافع عن النقاش العقلاني. سنقف دوماً إلى جانب كرامة الإنسان والقيم العالمية.— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 25, 2020
French websites come under cyberattack
Several French websites came under cyberattack Sunday over anti-Islamic remarks by the country’s president and the republication of cartoons insulting Prophet Muhammad.
An anti-malware and support unit account on Twitter said a major cyberattack against French websites was underway.
“A wave of cyberattacks has hit French websites Sunday evening,” it said, without elaborating.
France o urged Middle Eastern countries to stop boycotting French products
France on Sunday urged Middle Eastern countries to stop retail companies from boycotting French products.
The foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that in recent days there had been calls to boycott French products, notably food products, in several Middle Eastern countries as well as calls for demonstrations against France over the publication of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
“These calls for boycott are baseless and should stop immediately, as well as all attacks against our country, which are being pushed by a radical minority,” the statement said.
Read more:
OUTRAGE, PROTESTS AND BOYCOTTS OVER MACRON’S ANTI-ISLAM COMMENTS
‘WE WILL NOT GIVE UP CARTOONS’: MACRON
‘FRENCH ISLAM’: TURKEY’S PRESIDENT ERDOGAN SLAMS MACRON OVER ANTI-ISLAM RHETORIC
Al-Azhar
Reaction from PM Imran
On Sunday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned Macron’s statements on Twitter.
“It is unfortunate that he has chosen to encourage Islamophobia by attacking Islam rather than the terrorists who carry out violence, be it Muslims, White Supremacists or Nazi ideologists. Sadly, President Macron has chosen to deliberately provoke Muslims, incl his own citizens, through encouraging the display of blasphemous cartoons targeting Islam & our Prophet PBUH.”
Hallmark of a leader is he unites human beings, as Mandela did, rather than dividing them. This is a time when Pres Macron could have put healing touch & denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarisation & marginalisation that inevitably leads to radicalisation
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) October 25, 2020
Khan also wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeking a ban on Islamophobic content on the site that has been put in place for the Holocaust.
In the letter, shared by the Pakistani government on Twitter, Imran Khan said that “growing Islamophobia” is encouraging extremism and violence across the world – especially through social media platforms such as Facebook.
“I would ask you to place a similar ban on Islamophobia and hate against Islam for Facebook that you have put in place for the Holocaust,” Khan said.
“The message of hate must be banned in total. One cannot send a message that while hate messages against some are unacceptable, these are acceptable against others. Nor should the world have to wait for a pogrom against Muslims, which is ongoing in countries like India and in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”
Khan in his letter made reference to the situation in France, where, he said, Islam was being associated with terrorism.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut
Also on Sunday, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, “When truth is spoken to their faces, Europe’s loser racists show up and try to exploit Islamophobia and xenophobia. Time has come to stop Europe’s spoiled politicians with fascist mindset.”
When truth spoken to their faces Europe’s loser racists showed up again. Trying to exploit Islamophobia and xenophobia. Time has come to stop Europe’s spoiled politicians with fascist mindset.
— Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu) October 25, 2020
French products boycotted
Macron’s comments have spurred social media hashtags like #BoycottFrenchProducts in several Arab countries and Turkey.
In Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy, a hashtag calling for the boycott of French supermarket retailer Carrefour was the second most trending on Sunday.
Jordan’s opposition Islamic Action Front party called on the French president to apologise for his comments and urged citizens in the kingdom to boycott French goods.
Such boycotts are already underway in Kuwait and Qatar. Many Arab companies began removing French products from their shelves
Images on social media show workers removing French Kiri and Babybel processed cheese from shelves of supermarkets in Kuwait.
Also in Kuwait, the non-governmental Union of Consumer Co-operative Societies, which groups more than 70 establishments, issued a boycott directive in an October 23 circular.
“All French products have been removed from all Consumer Cooperative Societies,” union head Fahd Al Kishti told Reuters, adding that the move was in response to “repeated insults” against the Prophet and had been taken independently of Kuwait’s government.
In Qatar, Alwajba Dairy Company and Al Meera Consumer Goods Company said they will boycott French products and will provide other alternatives.
Qatar University announced that it postponed its French Cultural Week in protest.
In Doha, an AFP correspondent saw workers stripping shelves of French-made St. Dalfour jams and Saf-Instant yeast in a branch of the Al Meera supermarket chain on Saturday.
Al Meera competes with French supermarket chains Monoprix and Carrefour for market share in the lucrative Qatari grocery sector.
Al Meera and another grocery operator, Souq Al Baladi, released statements late Friday saying they would pull French products from stores until further notice.
The campaign to #boycottfranceproducts is still trending in the Arab world.
The combined hashtags racked up more than 4 million tweets.
Today, multiple supermarkets in Qatar started removing all french products from the shelves.#مقاطعه_المنتجات_الفرنسيه#ماكرون_يسيء_للنبي https://t.co/KRbVMlKrfr
— Amine محمد الأمين (@mohammedaamine) October 24, 2020
Backlash
Before Macron’s comments, he had already sparked a backlash in early October when he said “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world”.
Nayef Falah Mubarak Al-Hajraf, secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council called Macron’s words “irresponsible” on Friday, and said they would “increase the spread of a culture of hatred”.
The same day, Qatar University wrote on Twitter that following “the deliberate abuse of Islam and its symbols”, French Cultural Week would be postponed indefinitely, in a context where 2020 is the France-Qatar year of culture.
Many Jordanians have changed their profiles on Facebook to add the message “Respect Mohammad the Prophet of Allah (God)”.
In Jaffa, a largely Arab town next to Tel Aviv, some 200 people protested after evening prayers on Saturday in front of the residence of France’s ambassador to Israel.
