All that was missing was a diplomatic fire.
After the health, economic and social crisis, Emmanuel Macron donned his firefighter costume this Saturday to try to reduce the outbreak of anger in part of the Muslim world, after the republication of the cartoons of Muhammad.
From Indonesia to Turkey, Pakistan to the Maghreb via Iran, violent protests have broken out.
With their batch of burnt tricolor flags, trampled photos of Emmanuel Macron, calls to boycott French products.
"I understand the feelings that this arouses, I respect them, but I want you to understand the role that is mine.
My role is to calm things down, ”assured Emmanuel Macron, Saturday, on the Al-Jazeera channel.
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Call for a boycott of French products in the Middle East: Paris launches the response
Convinced that his speeches were distorted, the Head of State gave a long interview to this Qatari media followed by 40 million viewers.
A choice that owes nothing to chance.
The channel is accused by French diplomacy of peddling hostile positions.
“I was made to say:
I support the cartoons humiliating the prophet.
I never said that, ”thundered the president.
And to continue: “I am in favor of people being able to write, think and draw freely in my country.
It's a right, it's our freedoms.
"
For nearly an hour, the Head of State tried to explain French secularism.
He recalled that the controversial drawings did not emanate from “official journals”.
"It was not the French government that made these caricatures," he recalled, slipping in passing that he was himself the subject of caricatures.
VIDEO. Macron: the boycott of French products is "unworthy" and "inadmissible"
After the pedagogy, the counter-attack.
Raising the tone, the Head of State scratched, without naming them, the regimes which support a "crazy" boycott.
Countries where "we have broken the hands of cartoonists or cartoonists", where we "have sometimes killed journalists or put them in prison."
This is not the case with France.
"Return to sender ..." We must not be naive, our country is facing a campaign organized by countries like Turkey, Iran and Pakistan which manipulate the demonstrators, "assures an adviser to the executive.
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Hence this severe warning from Emmanuel Macron: "all political and religious leaders who do not condemn with the greatest clarity any form of violence against France which is a country of freedom and Enlightenment, take a sometimes direct responsibility, in any case certain indirect responsibility for the violence that would be committed against the French in France or abroad.
In the sights: the Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had been slow to condemn the beheading of Samuel Paty.
“I'm telling you very clearly: not with us!
"
Asked about his fight against "separatism", Emmanuel Macron launched into a strong indictment against these "groups" which teach "that women are not the equal of men, that little girls should not have the same rights as little boys ”.
“I'm telling you very clearly: not with us!
He says.
A way of also bringing French public opinion to witness, a few weeks before the presentation of the bill against separatism.
And while the Head of State wants to occupy the sovereign ground for 2022.
More unexpected: Emmanuel Macron must also face criticism from one of his closest allies.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has disassociated himself from Paris by pleading that freedom of expression has "limits" and that we must "not arbitrarily or unnecessarily hurt those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet ”.
Dry response from a powerful diplomat: “France has more important demands than Mr. Trudeau's model of freedom.
"
