Emmanuel Macron says France fighting extremism, not Islam

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron has said his country is against "Islamist separatism — never Islam", responding to Financial Times correspondent Mehreen Khan's op-ed that he claimed misquoted him and has since been removed from the newspaper's website.

In a letter to the editor published Wednesday, Macron said the British paper had accused him of "stigmatising French Muslims for electoral purposes and of fostering a climate of fear and suspicion towards them".

"I will not allow anybody to claim that France, or its government, is fostering racism against Muslims," he said. "Let us not nurture ignorance by distorting the words of a head of state.

"We know only too well where that can lead."

An opinion article written by Mehreen Khan, the Financial Times reporter, and published Tuesday alleged that Macron’s condemnation of "Islamic separatism" risked fostering a "hostile environment" for French Muslims.

The article was later removed from the paper's website, replaced with a notice saying it had "contained factual errors".

'Orwellian world'

However, some people on the Internet were not happy, asserting that Financial Times' removal of Mehreen Khan's op-ed was a dent to the freedom of speech.

"We are now in the purely Orwellian world of someone criticising an article that has been erased and cannot be read," wrote Portuguese politician Bruno Maçães.

"So the Elysee [Palace] lobbied the Financial Times to unpublish Mehreen Khan's op-ed (admittedly completely missing the mark)," asked another user.

A lot of criticism came from users based in Turkey.

"A @FinancialTimes with Mehreen Khan's article removed from the publication cannot speak of press freedom," wrote one.

"Social media and media giants are playing a dirty one-way game of 'righteousness' ... I wonder what our mediators who are fond of freedom of thought will say," asked another.

"Insults are free, but they do not tolerate criticism," said one user.

Yet another user asked Financial Times Editor-in-Chief Roula Khalaf "when is your term up anyway?" and hoped "a 6'3 white guy" would take her place instead.

However, the president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer, termed Financial Times pulling down Mehreen Khan's op-ed as "a win over Fake News and partisanship".

Bremmer had quote-tweeted another Twitter user, who had pointed out that Khan was "entitled to her opinion - but not her own facts" as, according to him, "she attributes stuff to @EmmanuelMacron which he never said".

'Oppose deception, fanaticism, violent extremism'

Emmanuel Macron sparked protests across the Muslim world after last month’s murder of teacher Samuel Paty — who had shown his class a blasphemous caricature — by saying France would never renounce its laws permitting controversial caricatures.

Following the protests and boycotts of French goods across the world, Macron told the Al-Jazeera network over the weekend that he understood the caricatures could be shocking for some.

Read more: French President Macron seeks to calm tensions with Muslim community

But recounting a wave of Islamist attacks in France since 2015, the French president warned in his letter this week that there were still "breeding grounds" for extremism in France.

"In certain districts and on the internet, groups linked to radical Islam are teaching hatred of the republic to our children, calling on them to disregard its laws," he wrote.

"This is what France is fighting against... hatred and death that threaten its children — never against Islam. We oppose deception, fanaticism, violent extremism. Not a religion."