Malaysia’s previous Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Thursday Muslims reserve an option to “kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past” yet he didn’t endorse the killing of a French educator over his utilization of cartoons of the Prophet.
In a blog post Mahathir, 95, a regarded pioneer in the Muslim world, said he believed in freedom of expression but that it should not be used to insult others.
“Muslims reserve a privilege to be irate and to murder a great many French individuals for the slaughters of the past. However, all around the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t,” Mahathir said in a blog post, which he additionally posted on Twitter.
“Since you have accused all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was finished by one furious individual, the Muslims reserve an option to rebuff the French,” he said.
Twitter said the message disregarded its standards and it had deleted the tweet. A few Muslim-majority nations have criticized comments by French authorities, including President Emmanuel Macron, defending the utilization of drawing of the Prophet Mohammad in a French school classroom. The caricatures are seen as blasphemous by Muslims.
The contest erupted after a French educator who demonstrated his students’ cartoons of the Prophet during a civics exercise was later beheaded in the road by an assailant of Chechen root. French officials said the killing was an attack on the core French value of freedom of expression and defended the right to publish the cartoons. Macron has also said he would redouble efforts to stop conservative Islamic beliefs subverting French values.