Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb urged its followers Monday to kill anyone insulting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and threatened French President Emmanuel Macron over his remarks on Islam.
Last month Macron defended the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) on the grounds of freedom of speech, launching a campaign against Islamic radicalism and sparking fury across the Muslim world.
“Killing anyone who insults the prophet is the right of each and every Muslim,” the militant group, knowns by its French acronym AQMI, said in a statement.
Read more: Al-Qaeda threatens Charlie Hebdo for republishing blasphemous cartoons
Macron’s remarks came after beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty near Paris by a suspected militant, after Paty had shown his students cartoons of the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) during a lesson on freedom of expression.
That followed the re-publication of the controversial cartoons in September by satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo. Macron has vowed to defend freedom of speech, but anger has spread among Muslims worldwide, with many vowing to boycott French products.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Killing anyone who insults the prophet is the right of each and every Muslim. https://t.co/XukWt1qhEu
— Israel National News – Arutz Sheva (@ArutzSheva_En) November 3, 2020
“The boycott is a duty but it is not enough,” AQMI said in the statement.
It threatened to avenge Macron’s comments, describing the French president as “young and unexperienced, with a little brain” and saying he had “insisted on offending the Prophet(PBUH)”.
Last month Al-Qaeda has threatened French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo with a repeat of a 2015 massacre of its staff, after it republished controversial cartoons insulting to Islam, the SITE observatory said on Friday.
Al-Qaeda in its publication One Ummah had warned that Charlie Hebdo would be mistaken if it believed the 2015 attack was a “one-off” after the magazine printed the “contemptible caricatures” in a defiant issue that marked the start of the trial in Paris of suspected accomplices in the attack.
Read more: Turkish business world backs Erdogan call for boycott of French products
The comments came in an English edition of the Al-Qaeda publication that purported to mark the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States carried out by the terror network.
It said it had the “same message” for the France of President Emmanuel Macron as it did for his predecessor Francois Hollande who was president at the time of the 2015 attacks. It said France under Macron “gave a green light” to the republication of the cartoons.
AFP with additional input by GVS News Desk