The United Arab Emirates have defended French President Emmanuel Macron in the controversy that has swelled in the Muslim world in recent days against him, over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
In an interview published Monday, November 2 in the German daily
Die Welt
, the Emirati Foreign Minister, Anwar Gargash, rejected the idea that Emmanuel Macron had expressed a message of exclusion of Muslims.
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"You have to listen to what Macron in his speech really said, he does not want ghettoization of Muslims in the West and he is absolutely right,"
he said.
Muslims must integrate better and the French state is entitled to seek ways to achieve this while fighting against radicalism and community confinement, added the head of diplomacy.
Anti-French protests in some Muslim countries erupted in reaction to statements by Emmanuel Macron defending the right to cartoon in the name of freedom of expression.
He was reacting to the beheading on October 16 by an Islamist of a French teacher who had shown his students caricatures of the prophet of Islam, in the midst of the trial of the 2015 attack against
Charlie Hebdo
.
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For the Emirati minister the controversy is above all the result of political recovery by the Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“As soon as Erdogan sees a loophole or weakness, he uses it to increase his influence.
It is only when he is shown the red line that he is ready to negotiate, ”
added Mr. Gargasch.