Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamad responded to French President Macron’s criticism of Islam by tweeting on Thursday that killing is “not an act that as a Muslim I would approve”. However, he later tweeted, “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.
The comment comes in the wake of the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty by an 18-year old Muslim who took offense at the display of an image of Muhammad during a lesson on free speech.
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“Macron is not showing that he is civilised. He is very primitive in blaming the religion of Islam and Muslims for the killing of the insulting school teacher. It is not in keeping with the teachings of Islam,” he posted.
Bin Mohamad justified his call to violence by claiming that France has killed millions, many of them Muslims.
But irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill. The French in the course of their history has killed millions of people. Many were Muslims.
— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 29, 2020
His tweets came hours after a knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded one woman and murdered two others at a church in Nice, France.
Mahathir bin Mohamad is 95-years old. He is a Malaysian politician who served as the 4th and 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, and again from 2018 to 2020. He is a self-proclaimed anti-Semite and has stated that he is proud to be so.
