Mahathir disgusted at misrepresentation of his statement on France

KUALA LUMPUR – Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has expressed disgust at attempts by certain quarters to misrepresent his blog post yesterday on comments he made about the French.

The elder statesman said critics have taken his words out of context, and only highlighted a part of his statement, ultimately changing the tone and meaning of his expression.

“They only highlighted one part of paragraph 12 which read ‘Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past’. They stopped there and implied that I am promoting the massacre of the French.

“They should have read the posting in its entirety and especially the subsequent sentence which says ‘But by and large the Muslims have not applied the eye for an eye law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t,’” he said today.

“Because of the spin and out of context presentation by those that picked up my posting, reports were made against me and I am accused of promoting violence on Facebook and Twitter,” he added.

Yesterday, after posting the same statement on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, the social media sites took down the 12th of 13 tweets by Dr Mahathir, supposedly for glorifying violence.

Dr Mahathir’s statement yesterday was in response to comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron attacking Islam and the Muslim community after a teacher was beheaded by a Muslim student for showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.

Mahathir’s harsh remarks sparked furore in Malaysia and globally, many accusing the nonagenarian of condoning violence.

France’s junior digital affairs minister Cedric O even demanded that Twitter suspend Mahathir’s account or be seen as an “accomplice to a formal call for murder”.

Mahathir said both Twitter and Facebook had requested for his postings to be removed despite attempts to explain its context.

“On the one hand, they defended those who chose to display offending caricatures of Prophet Muhammad and expect all Muslims to swallow it in the name of freedom of speech and expression.

“On the other, they deleted deliberately (statements) that Muslim had never sought revenge for the injustice against them in the past,” he said. - The Vibes, October 30, 2020