Aversion to Muslim Neighbours? Wonder Why!

"With his reckless actions under the pretense of ‘supporting freedom of expression’, [Macron] is triggering a conflict, [a] rupture whose global repercussions can deeply and negatively impact people of all beliefs."

Turkish Parliament

 

"The Turkish president does not represent Muslims, nor the Muslim world. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] has political disagreements with many countries in the region such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt." 

"It's shameful [Erdogan’s attacks on French President Emmanuel Macron and his call for a boycott of French goods]."

"In France, Muslims have as much freedom and enjoy the same rights as all their fellow citizens. There are 2,500 Muslim houses of prayer. The laws of the republic allow for everyone to live their faith freely."

"French citizens of the Muslim faith [should rally behind Macron.] Let’s be strong together."

Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, president, Conference of Imams of France 

A Palestinian burns a picture depicting French President Emmanuel Macron [Suhaib Salem/Reuters]

"[President Emmanuel Macron is contributing to the radicalization of people by insisting that caricatures of Prophet Muhammad falls under free speech.] You are forcing people into terrorism, pushing people towards it, not leaving them any choice, creating the conditions for the growth of extremism in young people’s heads."

"You can boldly call yourself the leader and inspiration of terrorism in your country."

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyron

 

"[Malaysia is] gravely concerned [over the] growing open hostilities towards Muslims following French teacher Samuel Paty’s brutal killing]."

"As a matter of principle, we strongly condemn any inflammatory rhetoric and provocative acts that seek to defame the religion of Islam."

Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein

More than one in four non-Muslims in Austria do not want Muslims neighbors. This percentage is remarkably high in the UK as well, at 21 percent. In Germany, 19 percent of non-Muslim respondents say that they would not welcome Muslim neighbors. The figure stands at 17 percent in Switzerland and 14 percent in France. Overall, Muslims are among the most rejected social group.

#IStandWithFrance and #WeStandWithFrance is trending in Hindu-majority India, the country hosting the third-largest Muslim population worldwide. Indian Twitter is alive with support for France's position on extremist Islamism where in various Muslim-packed banlieues in France some mosques and their religious leaders along with other Muslim special-interest groups foment Islamist notions of defiance, claiming French laws to be subservient to Islamic Sharia law. It is where the violence of jihad is promoted, and which the French government has now declared itself at 'war' with Islamist 'separatism'. In India, that message resonates, leading thousands to express solidarity with France.

In the Muslim world, however, Turkish President Erdogan unleashed a storm of vengeance against French President Emmanuel Macron when he retorted that he needed to have his head examined and furiously informed Turks that French goods should be shunned. Presumably he also ordered his wife to stop carrying her costly French-designer handbag. In Kuwait, the board of directors of the Al-Naeem Cooperative Society launched a boycott of all French products, ordering their removal from supermarket shelves. 

"Based on the position of French President Emmanuel Macron and his support for the offensive cartoons against our beloved prophet, we decided to remove all French products from the market and branches until further notice", announced the Dahiyat al-Thuhr association as it followed suit. Reminiscent of the 2005 outrage in the Muslim world when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen editorial cartoons, most of them depicting the Prophet Mohammad in undignified poses.  

 

And out of that episode came universal rage in the Islamic world erupting into violent protests, a number of deaths associated with those protests and widespread boycotting of Danish goods. Now France is facing a similar situation, sufficiently so that its government has taken steps to warn French expats to take extra safety precautions wherever they are in Muslim-majority countries to avoid any controversy over the Mohammad cartoons and to stay away from protests where they too could become vengeance targets like French teacher Samuel Paty.

 

The situation of his death is a replay of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine publication of the Mohammad cartoons that resulted in an atrocity that killed a dozen people at the editorial offices of the magazine when Islamist gunmen went on a murder spree, that spread by other jihadists targeting a French kosher supermarket slaughtering three more, plus a female police officer a day previous. These vengeance killings by Islamists as punishment for being Jewish and for sacrilege posing as freedom of speech is what has motivated the French president to launch a steep investigation of the presence of Muslim enemies of the Republic.

In January 2015, millions of people flooded the streets of Paris and other French cities to denounce the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. An angry nation brandished brightly colored pencils and banners, defending free expression and France's staunchly secular ideology.

Typical of Islam, the frothing-at-the-mouth accusations of Western-based attacks against Islamic values and the sacredness of its founder-prophet, blaming the West for the terrorist excesses of pious, faithful jihadists responding to the call of Islam, the religion of peace, to mount terror on the non-Muslim countries of 'war'. And so it is that Islamists run amok in their pernicious, vile attacks against infidel targets, while the clerics espousing the glory of jihad blame the West's self-protective response to Islamist atrocities against the West, is claimed to be nurturing terrorism.

 

To their credit, Saudi Arabia appears to have spurned calls elsewhere in the Muslim world for a boycott of French products, even while the Kingdom condemns the cartoons. But in Bangladesh, thousands of protesters marched through Dhaka, rabidly furious Bangladeshis stamping on posters of President Macron. Iran took the outraged step of diplomacy, summoning the French charge d'affaires in registering their protest against the cartoons; an absurdity of sanctimonious heights from the premiere fomenter of violence in the West, a signal champion of terrorism.

 

And so it is that the French foreign ministry has warned its nationals to take particular personal care to protect themselves in Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Mauritania, to avoid public gatherings and upgrade their level of alertness. Since the murder of French teacher Paty, people in France have themselves been protesting, displaying the cartoons in the street. In one city the cartoons were projected on to a building. At least one Paris mosque has been temporarily closed for its part in urging action against Samuel Paty for showing cartoons of Mohammad in one of his middle school classes in history.

 

Security alerts saw the closure of the areas around the Arc de Triomphe on Tuesday and the Eiffel Tower in central Paris. A bomb alert forced the evacuation of the Arc de Triomphe area and surrounding subway stations. The discovery of a bag filled with ammunition necessitated the brief evacuation of the Paris Champ de Mars park around the Eiffel Tower, in another display of Muslim disenchantment with the French government's taking such paltry matters as the murder of a Frenchman for 'insulting' the Prophet seriously.

 

A woman holds a picture of Samuel Paty, at the Place de la Liberte in Lille on October 18.