Tag: EMmanuel Macron

  • VIDEO: Egg on French president’s face over Islam remarks?

    French President Emmanuel Macron has come under criticism over his remarks on Islam after a teacher was beheaded on the streets of Paris allegedly for showing blasphemous cartoons to students.

    Amid this, a video of Macron having an egg thrown at his face as he is in conversation with some people is circulating on social media.

    WATCH VIDEO:

    The claim along with the video says Macron was attacked for his remarks on Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and Islam, which have led to calls for a boycott of French products across the Muslim world.

    The Current has found the claim along with the video to be misleading. The video was shot in March 2017 in Paris days before the presidential elections in France, when Macron was a candidate for the top post.

    Using related keywords, we found some media reports carrying a similar video of the event, shot from a different angle.

    A report by Express says Macron was attacked by a protester with an egg when he was attending an agriculture show in Paris in March 2017.

    This was not the first time when Macron was egged. In 2016 too, an angry mob pelted eggs on Macron in Paris.

    So, it has been established that the video is more than three years old and has nothing to with Macron’s recent remarks on Islam.

    ‘WON’T GIVE INTO ISLAMIC RADICALS’:

    On Sunday, Macron tweeted, “We will not give in, ever to Islamic radicals.”

    “We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate,” the French leader added.

    Calls to boycott French goods are already growing in the Arab world and beyond after Macron criticised Islamists and vowed not to “give up cartoons” depicting the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

    Macron’s initial comments, on Wednesday, had come 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 the blasphemous cartoons during a class he was leading on free speech.

    With the French president pledging to fight “Islamist separatism”, which he said was threatening to take control in some Muslim communities around France, hashtags such as the #BoycottFrenchProducts in English and the Arabic #ExceptGodsMessenger trended across countries, including Pakistan, Kuwait, Qatar, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

  • France urges Muslims to stop boycott of French products over blasphemous cartoons

    France has urged Arab countries to stop calls for boycotts of French products, while President Emmanuel Macron vowed the country would never give in to “Islamic radicals”.

    The French Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday that in recent days there had been calls to boycott French products, notably food products, in several Middle Eastern countries as well as calls for demonstrations against France over the publication of satirical cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

    “These calls for boycott are baseless and should stop immediately, as well as all attacks against our country, which are being pushed by a radical minority,” the statement said.

    On Sunday, Macron tweeted, “We will not give in, ever to Islamic radicals.”

    “We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate,” the French leader added.

    Calls to boycott French goods are already growing in the Arab world and beyond after Macron criticised Islamists and vowed not to “give up cartoons” depicting the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

    Macron’s initial comments, on Wednesday, had come 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 the blasphemous cartoons during a class he was leading on free speech.

    With the French president pledging to fight “Islamist separatism”, which he said was threatening to take control in some Muslim communities around France, hashtags such as the #BoycottFrenchProducts in English and the Arabic #ExceptGodsMessenger trended across countries, including Pakistan, Kuwait, Qatar, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

  • French president refuses to condemn blasphemous caricatures of Holy Prophet (PBUH)

    French President Emmanuel Macron has defended the decision by Charlie Hebdo magazine to re-publish blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), saying “we have freedom of expression and freedom of belief”.

    But Macron, speaking on a visit to Lebanon on Tuesday, said it was incumbent on French citizens to show civility and respect for each other, and avoid a “dialogue of hate”.

    “It’s never the place of a president to pass judgment on the editorial choice of a journalist or newsroom, never. Because we have freedom of the press,” Macron said.

    The infamous French magazine is republishing the offensive caricatures, which unleashed a wave of anger in the Muslim world, to mark the start of the trial of alleged accomplices in the militant attack against it in 2015.

    Most cartoons were first published by a Danish newspaper in 2005 and then by Charlie Hebdo a year later.

    “We will never lie down. We will never give up,” Editor Laurent Sourisseau wrote in a piece to accompany the front cover that will be published in print on Wednesday.

    Twelve people, including some of the magazine’s cartoonists, were killed when Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and sprayed the building with automatic gunfire.

    The Kouachi brothers and a third gunman who killed five people in the 48 hours that followed the Charlie Hebdo massacre were shot dead by police in different stand-offs, but 14 of their alleged accomplices go on trial on Wednesday.

    The decision to republish the offensive cartoons will be seen by some as a defiant gesture in defence of free expression.

    But others may see it as a renewed provocation by a magazine that has long courted controversy with its satirical attacks on religion.

    After the 2006 publication of the cartoons, people online warned the weekly would pay for its mockery. For Muslims, any depiction of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) is blasphemous.