JAKARTA (INDONESIA) – President Joko Widodo of Indonesia on Saturday condemned the terrorist attacks in France, but warned that French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks insulted Islam and “hurt the unity of Muslims everywhere.”
In the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, conservative Islamic organisations have demanded protests and boycotts against France while sharing a picture of Macron depicting him as a red-eyed devilish snail.
“Freedom of speech that injures the noble purity and sacred values and symbol of religion is so wrong, it shouldn’t be justified and it needs to stop,” said the president who is known by his popular name Jokowi, during a televised address.
“Linking religion to acts of terrorism is a massive mistake. Terrorists are terrorists,” he said.
On Thursday, a Tunisian wielding a knife and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) decapitated a woman and killed two others in Nice, France. This comes less than two weeks after a school teacher in a Parisian suburb was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen-origin teenager after being incensed by the teacher showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad to students in a civics class on freedom of expression.
Macron has vowed to stand firm against attacks on French values and freedom of belief, but some of his comments both prior to and after the recent attacks – including calling Islam “a religion in crisis all over the world” – have proved controversial.
Jokowi did not specify which of Macron’s comments he was referring to in his address on Saturday.
An Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Saturday the ministry had summoned the French ambassador on Tuesday over remarks by Macron they said “insulted Islam” and the fact he allowed publication of the cartoons.
Tens of thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, and the Palestinian territories protested against France on Friday.