Emmanuel Macron’s staunch defence of the right to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad proved popular in France. But now the president has a big fight on his hand abroad: French products have been removed from shops in Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan – and calls for a boycott are spreading.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the latest to join in: today he urged Turks to stop buying French goods. In a televised speech, he also told world leaders to intervene ‘if there is oppression against Muslims in France’. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s leader Imran Khan has accused Macron of ‘deliberately provoking Muslims’ as Islamabad hauled in the France ambassador for a dressing down. Khan wrote on Twitter:
‘(The) hallmark of a leader is (that) he unites human beings, as Mandela did, rather than dividing them. This is a time when president Macron could have put healing touch and denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarisation and marginalisation that inevitably leads to radicalisation. It
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