French President Emmanuel Macron had “offended” Muslims by describing the beheading on Friday of history teacher Samuel Paty as an act of Islamist terrorism, according to Egyptian TV host Mohamed Abdelbaky.
On an Oct. 17 show broadcast on Turkey’s Channel 9, Abdelbaky discussed the murder of the 47-year-old history teacher, who was killed for having shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Abdelbaky criticized French authorities for killing the murderer instead of arresting and interrogating him and trying him to find out the “truth.”
Credit for the murder was claimed by 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Abouyezidovitch, who was killed by police on the same day, in the same Paris suburb where Paty’s body was found.
Claiming that Macron only seeks to prove that Muslims are terrorists, Abdelbaky said that freedom of expression in France should not include blasphemy against Islam. He also questioned why Paty had been showing cartoons of Muhammad in the first place.
Channel 9 is one of several Arabic-language TV channels affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood that broadcast from Turkey.
