Twitter removed an incendiary tweet from the former prime minister of Malaysia on Thursday that claimed Muslims have the right to kill millions of French people.
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, 95, who served as the fourth and seventh prime minister of Malaysia and remains in its parliament, addressed the recent turmoil roiling France in a blog post that was also posted as a lengthy Twitter thread.
“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t,” Mahathir wrote in part.
“Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French,” he added.
Urging the West to refrain from forcing their values on other cultures, Mohamad also railed against French President Emmanuel Macron as “very primitive” for pinpointing Islam as the reason an 18-year-old Muslim recently beheaded a Paris teacher who had shown his students a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.
“Macron is not showing that he is civilised. He is very primitive in blaming the religion of Islam and Muslims for the killing of the insulting school teacher. It is not in keeping with the teachings of Islam,” Mohamad scolded.
Reason why Mahathir, Erdogan and Imran Khan are BFFs. pic.twitter.com/mNcjBBOXtD
— Naila Inayat नायला इनायत (@nailainayat) October 29, 2020
After Mohamad’s tweets were met with outrage, Twitter removed his most inflammatory sentiment.
I just spoke with the MD of @TwitterFrance. The account of @chedetofficial must be immediately suspended. If not, @twitter would be an accomplice to a formal call for murder.
— Cédric O (@cedric_o) October 29, 2020
Tweet deleted #MahathirMohamad pic.twitter.com/3e30D5CHX0
— Manak Gupta (@manakgupta) October 29, 2020
Mohamad’s tweet storm came on the heels of Macron declaring France “under attack” after three people were murdered in a Nice, France, basilica by a radical Muslim. As The Daily Wire reported:
Three people died in a knife-attack in Nice, France, on Thursday in what may be the third terror attack on French soil in about a month.
A man wielding a knife entered the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice and killed two people and fatally wounded a third who was able to escape outside the church before dying, according to French authorities. Police are treating the incident as an act of terrorism, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Everything leads us to believe it was a terrorist attack within the Notre Dame basilica,” Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi said on Twitter.
Several French media outlets reported that at least one of the victims of the attack was beheaded, mirroring an attack earlier this month in which a French schoolteacher was beheaded by a suspected Islamic radical.
Police captured the attacker soon after the incident, shooting him in the shoulder and transporting him to a local hospital, according to The Guardian. Estrosi said that while the man was being taken into custody, he repeatedly yelled “Allahu Akbar.”
“We have two people killed inside the church … and a third person who was in a bar facing the church where she had taken refuge,” Estrosi said. “Enough is enough … we have to remove this Islamo-fascism from our territory.”
Related: Suspected Terrorist Kills Three In French Church Attack, Mayor Calls To Purge ‘Islamo-Fascism’