Mahathir Mohamad ‘disgusted with attempts to misrepresent’ his views regarding French attacks

The Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, has said social media platforms Twitter and Facebook “misrepresented” his tweet of a blog post. He said they deleted a part of the Twitter post in which he penned Muslims had “a right to be offended and kill millions of French people for the killings of the past.”

In a new tweet, Dr. Mahathir said he was “upset with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context” what he had written. He said that the post section needed to be read with the following paragraph in which he wrote: “But in general, the Muslims haven’t applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. If Muslims don’t, the French shouldn’t.”

MISREPRESENTED CONTEXT

1. I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog yesterday. https://t.co/QFQZ0y7HUD

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 30, 2020

The two parts appeared as separate tweets on Twitter, where they were posted as a thread. The publication was written in the context of Thursday’s knife attack at a Nice church in which three people were murdered.

The Malaysian government separately said it “strongly condemned” the Nice attack. In a statement on Friday, it said the incident was a reminder of the “urgent need for a collective effort to eradicate acts and threats of terrorism.”

Mahathir, who resigned from his post in March this year, and is a respected politician in the Muslim world, said he believed in freedom of expression, but it should not be used to abuse others.

2. Those who did that highlighted only 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.”

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 30, 2020

3. They stopped there and implied that I am promoting the massacre of the French.

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 30, 2020

He reiterated that point on Friday.

“There is nothing I can do with Facebook and Twitter’s decision to remove my post,” he wrote, adding that he had tried to “explain and defend” his position.

“That is what freedom of speech is to them,” he wrote. “On the contrary, they defended those who chose to advertise offending cartoons and expect Muslims worldwide to tolerate it in the name of freedom of speech. At the same time, they deleted my post deliberately that Muslims had never tried to take revenge for the crime against them in the past.”

7. There is nothing I can do with FB and Twitter’s decision to remove my post. To my mind, since they are the purveyor of freedom of speech, they must at least allow me to explain and defend my position.

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 30, 2020

8. But that is what freedom of speech is to them. On the one hand, they defended those who chose to display offending caricatures of Prophet Muhammad S.A.W. and expect all Muslims to swallow it in the name of freedom of speech and expression.

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 30, 2020

On the other, they deleted deliberately that Muslims had never sought revenge for the injustice against them in the past.

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 30, 2020

The Former Malaysian PM’s initial posting – entitled RESPECT OTHERS – was about the French reaction to the brutal killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher who showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) during a discussion in a civics class.

Twitter initially signaled the tweet as “glorifying violence” and later removed that section from the thread.

Mahathir also said that the French President, Emmanuel Macron, was “not showing that he is civilized,” adding he was “very primitive.”

“French people should learn to respect other people’s feelings and emotions,” he said.

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