Emmanuel Macron’s vow not to give up Prophet Mohammed cartoons provokes Arab boycott
- Macron’s comments came in response to the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, outside his school in a Paris suburb
- Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a class he was leading on free speech
Calls to boycott French goods are growing in the Arab world and beyond, after President Emmanuel Macron criticised Islamists and vowed not to “give up cartoons” depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Macron’s comments, on October 24, came in response to the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, outside his school in a suburb outside Paris earlier this month, after he had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a class he was leading on free speech.
The teacher became the target of an online hate campaign over his choice of lesson material – the same images that unleashed a bloody assault by Islamist gunmen on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the original publisher, in January 2015.
Caricatures of Mohammed are forbidden by Islam.
On Saturday, Jordan’s foreign ministry said it condemns the “continued publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed under the pretext of freedom of expression” and any “discriminatory and misleading attempts that seek to link Islam with terrorism.”
It did not directly criticise Macron, although the French president had on October 24 also contended that Paty was “killed because Islamists want our future”.