Wed 28 October 2020:
Saudi Arabia’s cabinet renewed on Tuesday its refusal of any attempt to link Islam and terrorism, it said in a statement.
The cabinet also condemned cartoons offending the Prophet Mohammad.
The statement did not refer to calls in some Muslim countries for a boycott of French products over images being displayed in France of the Prophet.
The statement added that the cabinet also renewed “its condemnation and rejection of every terrorist act or practices and actions that generate hatred, violence, and extremism”, while affirming that intellectual freedom is a means of respect, tolerance, and peace.
Earlier on Saudi government also called for “intellectual and cultural freedom to be a beacon of respect, tolerance and peace that rejects practices and acts which generate hatred, violence and extremism and are contrary to the values of coexistence,” a Saudi foreign ministry official told state media on Tuesday.
The official added that Riyadh condemned all acts of terrorism regardless of the perpetrators, in an apparent reference to the beheading of a teacher in Paris this month by a Muslim man angered by the use of caricatures of the Prophet in a class on free speech.
In Saudi Arabia, calls for a boycott of French supermarket chain Carrefour were trending on social media, though a company representative in France told Reuters news agency it had yet to feel any impact.
Tuesday’s statement from the Saudi foreign ministry did not mention the boycott calls.
Reuters / Al Jazeera
