OIC blasts French incitement against Muslims, Islam’s Prophet

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has censured attempts by French politicians to link Muslims and the noble religion of Islam with terrorism, amid growing anti-Islam sentiment due to hostile policies adopted by the European state.

The General Secretariat of the OIC condemned in a statement on Friday continued attacks and incitement against Muslim sentiment and insults of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

The statement criticized the "discourse from certain French politicians, which it deems to be harmful to the Muslim-French relations, hate-mongering and only serving partisan political interests."

The OIC also said it "will always condemn practices of blasphemy and of insulting Prophets of Islam, Christianity and Judaism" as it condemned any crime committed in the name of religion.

The statement also denounced the killing of French teacher Samuel Paty, who was decapitated last Friday in a Paris suburb, and rejected the “incitement against Islam, its symbols and linking Islam and Muslims with terrorism.”

The history teacher had raised controversy and provoked anger over showing defamatory cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad to his students. Paty was murdered by an 18-year-old assailant, identified as Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov, who was shot dead by police soon after the killing.

The OIC's condemnation came after France’s approval of the publication of blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, with the country’s President Emmanuel Macron saying his country would not give up the insulting cartoons.

The French president has in recent weeks attacked Islam and the Muslim community, accusing Muslims of "separatism," and claiming that "Islam is a religion in crisis all over the world."

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French President Emmanuel Macron’s anti-Islam comments have drawn widespread backlash from Muslim activists.

The accusations coincided with a provocative move by Charlie Hebdo, a left-wing French magazine infamous for publishing anti-Islam content, which has drawn widespread anger and outrage across the Muslim world.

More than a dozen staff at Charlie Hebdo were killed in January 2015 by armed gunmen. The murder was blamed on Muslims for what was claimed to be a revenge for sacrilegious cartoons that condemned Islam.

This is while members of the Muslim community in France and elsewhere in the world have consistently denounced such brutal acts, describing them as going against the precepts of their religion.

French magazine reprints anti-Islamic cartoons on eve of terror trial

The French magazine Charlie Hebdo republishes offensive cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on the eve of the trial of suspects in a deadly attack on the paper’s office five years ago.

The French interior ministry said a total of 73 mosques, private schools, and workplaces had been shut down since January “in the fight against radicalization.”

Anti-Muslim sentiments have been on the rise across Europe in recent years in the wake of terrorist attacks in the continent. The attacks were carried out by the Daesh sympathizers or the terror group’s members who had returned home following their defeat in Iraq and Syria.

Muslim leaders in Europe and around the world have reiterated their unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist attacks.

Moreover, the rise of far-right ideology and the propagation of anti-immigration policies have exacerbated the status of religious minorities in Europe.

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