To find the ongoing coverage about Mila on Jihad Watch, see HERE.
Finally, Mila’s case has attracted attention from French President Emmanuel Macron who weighed in with the obvious, declaring that “blasphemy is no crime” in France.
Westerners need to freeze-frame that statement. Unless Sharia has taken over, criticizing Islam is perfectly acceptable in Western countries, as is insulting Islam. Neither are illegal. Christianity is routinely mocked in France and all over the West without the “offender” having to go into hiding. Islam should be no different; neither should any other religion or doctrine.
Macron went on:
“In this debate we have lost sight of the fact that Mila is an adolescent. We owe her protection at school, in her daily life, in her movements,” Macron said in an interview with Le Dauphiné Libéré newspaper.
The president added that in finding a new school for Mila, “the state has fulfilled its responsibilities” and that children needed to be “better protected” against “new forms of hatred and harassment online that can be destructive”.
“That necessity is separate from the criticism of religion. The law is clear: we have the right to blaspheme, to criticise, to caricature religions. The republican order is not a moral order … what is outlawed is to incite hatred and attack dignity,” Macron added.
On the other side (of his mouth), Macron recently stated that “those convicted of ‘hate speech’ should be banned from all social media for life.” The French leader has been battling for votes, caught between his globalist instincts and the rising “populist” movement.
“Blasphemy ‘is no crime’, says Macron amid French girl’s anti-Islam row,” by Kim Willsher, Guardian, February 12, 2020:
Emmanuel Macron has waded into a row over a schoolgirl whose attack on Islam has divided France, insisting that blasphemy is “no crime”.
The French president defended the teenager, named only as Mila, who received death threats and was forced out of her school after filming an anti-religious diatribe on social media.
Macron’s intervention comes after his justice minister, Nicole Belloubet, was criticised for claiming Mila’s attack on religion was “an attack on freedom of conscience” while saying the death threats were “unacceptable”.
The case has sparked a furious public debate in France, a strictly secular republic with a large Muslim population. The education authorities have since found another school for the teenager.
“In this debate we have lost sight of the fact that Mila is an adolescent. We owe her protection at school, in her daily life, in her movements,” Macron said in an interview with Le Dauphiné Libéré newspaper.
The president added that in finding a new school for Mila, “the state has fulfilled its responsibilities” and that children needed to be “better protected” against “new forms of hatred and harassment online that can be destructive”.
“That necessity is separate from the criticism of religion. The law is clear: we have the right to blaspheme, to criticise, to caricature religions. The republican order is not a moral order … what is outlawed is to incite hatred and attack dignity,” Macron added….