India on Wednesday came out in strong support of French President Emmanuel Macron after Turkey and Pakistan slammed him for his "anti-Islamic" comments following the beheading of a French school teacher after he had shown caricatures of Prophet Mohammed to his students earlier this month.
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) deplored personal attacks on Macron by terming it as "violation of the most basic standards of international discourse".
"We strongly deplore the personal attacks in unacceptable language on French President Emmanuel Macron in violation of most basic standards of international discourse," MEA said.
“We also condemn the brutal terrorist attack that took the life of a French teacher in a gruesome manner that has shocked the world. We offer our condolences to his family and the people of France," it said. “There is no justification for terrorism for any reason or under any circumstance," it added.
After the beheading of the school teacher Samuel Paty, Emmanuel Macron had said, "We will continue… We will defend the freedom that you taught so well and we will bring secularism." Macron further added that France would "not give up cartoons, drawings, even if others back down".
Earlier, Macron had said that Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world. It is "plagued by radical temptations and by a yearning for a reinvented jihad which is the destruction of the other," he added.
Meanwhile, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on Turks to boycott French goods and said Macron needed "mental checks". Vice-President Fuat Oktay has called on the international community to raise its voice against "this disgrace". "You cannot fool anyone by hiding behind freedom of thought," he said on Twitter. This was in response to Erdogan's cartoon in French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Besides, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday wrote a letter to the leaders of the Muslim states, asking them to make "collective efforts to confront growing trend of Islamophobia".
"The recent statements at the leadership level and incidents of desecration of the Holy Quran are a reflection of this increasing Islamophobia that is spreading in European countries where sizeable Muslim populations reside," read a letter posted on Khan's official Twitter account.
