EC Secretary Says Macron Should Apologize to Muslims, Calls for Expulsion of French Ambassadors from Muslim World

“The French president’s measure was a kind of political folly and he should apologize to the Islamic world for this position,” Rezayee, the former commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said.

He blamed certain Arab states which have normalized ties with Israel for Macron’s insolence to insult the Islamic sanctities, and said, “The Islamic states and bodies are necessitated to adopt more united and more serious positions against this blasphemous act.”

^{EC Secretary Mohsen Rezayee}

Rezayee also asked Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to urge Islamic states’ leaders to sack the French ambassadors from their countries in a coordinated move.

In recent weeks and after a French teacher was beheaded by an ISIL member after he displayed cartoons of the prophet of Islam, French President Emmanuel Macron attacked Islam and the Muslim community, accusing Muslims of “separatism”, and he said previously that “Islam is a religion in crisis all over the world”.

The incident in Paris coincided with a provocative move by Charlie Hebdo, a left-wing French magazine infamous for publishing anti-Islamic content, which has drawn widespread anger and outrage across the Muslim world.

The caricatures were first published in 2006 by a Danish newspaper Jylllands Posten, sparking a wave of protests.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned the French Chargé d’ Affaires, Florent Aydalot, over the French President’s recent remarks against Islam.

The French Charge d’ Affaires was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, in absence of its ambassador, to hear Iran’s condemnation of the growing anti-Islamic moves and remarks in France.

Aydalot received the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s condemnation of the sacrilegious acts in France and the following unacceptable remarks of the French authorities that have hurt the feelings of nearly 2 billion Muslims in the world and millions of Muslims in Europe.

“Any insult and disrespect to the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) and the pristine values of Islam are strongly condemned and rejected by every person and in every position,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry official who met the French diplomat said.

“It is of deep regret to incite Islamophobia and spread hatred in the name of freedom of expression, which should serve relations, empathy and peaceful coexistence among human societies.”

The French official ​​said he would convey Iran’s strong objection to Paris very soon.

In relevant remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blasted sacrilege of Islam’s Prophet (PBUH) in the European states, warning that disrespecting the sanctity of nearly two billion Muslims for the crimes of Wahhabi groups would only heightens extremism.

“Muslims are the primary victims of the cult of hatred (Wahhabism), empowered by colonial regimes and exported by their own clients,” Zarif wrote on his twitter page on Monday.

He said that insulting 1.9bln Muslims and their sanctities “for the abhorrent crimes of such extremists is an opportunistic abuse of freedom of speech”.