Paris: Emmanuel Macron has accused The New York Times and other English-language media outlets of “legitimising” violence against France by branding the country “racist and Islamophobic”.
In the latest round of a war of words with the “Anglo-Saxon” press, the French President said it had “failed to understand laïcité”, a Gallic term for secularism in which all religions are protected along with the freedom to blaspheme.
Muslim men burn a portrait of French President Emmanuel Macron during a protest outside the France embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on November 2.Credit:AP
He was speaking in the wake of last month’s beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, who was killed after showing his pupils cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in a lesson on free speech.
“When France was attacked five years ago, every nation in the world supported us,” Macron said, referring to the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings and the series of Islamist terror attacks which killed 130 people in Paris 10 months later. “So when I see, in that context, several newspapers which I believe are from countries that share our values… when I see them legitimising this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, then I say the founding principles have been lost,” he told Ben Smith, media columnist with The New York Times.
