Muslims Boycott France Over Macron Remarks

The boycott has inspired many people to speak out against French Islamophobia, similar to the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protests. (Wikimedia Commons.)

A new campaign urges Muslims to boycott French products after French President Emmanuel Macron made comments that activists found Islamophobic and generally offensive. 

Notably, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly supported the boycotts, prompting France to recall its ambassador to Turkey. Leaders from Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, and other Muslim-majority countries have also condemned Macron’s comments but stopped short of supporting the movements. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted about Macron’s remarks, writing “It is unfortunate that he has chosen to encourage Islamophobia by attacking Islam rather than the terrorists who carry out violence.”

Supermarket chains and food distributors across the Arab world have already removed French products from their shelves. The directors of Al-Naeem Cooperative Society in Kuwait, as well as companies in Tunisia, Qatar, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, announced that they would stop selling imports from France indefinitely in protest of Macron’s response to the recent attacks.

France has experienced a surge in extremist violence over the past month. An 18-year-old man attacked two people with a meat cleaver near the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on September 25. The paper had recently republished cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that had led to the Charlie Hebdo shootings in 2015. Macron said on October 2 that Islam “is in crisis all over the world” and claimed that many French Muslims live in a “parallel society” that is separate from the country’s culture. His remarks drew criticism from both foreign leaders and French Muslims. Two weeks later, a Russian-born teenager beheaded Samuel Paty, a French teacher, after Paty showed his class cartoons of Muhammad during a lesson on free speech. Macron defended the cartoons when he spoke at Paty’s state-funded funeral.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global recession that has negatively affected France. If the boycott movement spreads, it could further reduce French exports and stifle the country’s economic recovery. 

At the same time, both Macron’s remarks and the recent terrorist incidents have rekindled debate over the role of Islam in France. Secularism has long defined France’s civic culture, which emphasizes national unity over individual backgrounds. Observers predict that right-wing parties will make Islam a key issue in their campaigns during the upcoming 2022 presidential elections.