The French foreign ministry has demanded the withdrawal of comments made by Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari in which she accused President Emmanuel Macon of treating Muslims the way Nazis had treated Jews in World War II.
The comments were posted on Twitter as part of a clash between Pakistan and France over the publication of images of the Prophet Mohammad by a French magazine. The images have sparked anger and protests in the Muslim world, especially in Pakistan.
“Macron is doing to Muslims what the Nazis did to the Jews – Muslim children will get ID numbers (other children won’t) just as Jews were forced to wear the yellow star on their clothing for identification,” wrote Mazari in a tweet that was subsequently deleted.
“These hateful words are blatant lies, imbued with an ideology of hatred and violence. Such slander is unworthy of this level of responsibility. We reject them with the greatest firmness,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said, adding that Paris had informed the Pakistan embassy of its strong condemnation of the comments.
Pakistan’s parliament at the end of October passed a resolution urging the government to recall its envoy from Paris, accusing Macron of “hate-mongering” against Muslims.
Macron’s “offence” was to have paid tribute to French history teacher Samuel Paty who was beheaded by an 18-year-old immigrant of Chechen origin for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of speech.
French officials have said the beheading, which took place one week before another, which was accompanied by two further killings, in a church in Nice, was an assault on the core French value of freedom of expression.