France is looking at appointing a special envoy to explain Emmanuel Macron’s thinking on secularism and freedom of expression in a bid to quell the anti-French backlash growing in some Muslim countries, officials have said, reports The Guardian.
The growth in anti-French sentiment also has the potential to deepen the already entrenched conflict between Macron and Turkey over Libya and oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.
Macron has already conducted one lengthy interview on Al Jazeera Arabic seeking to justify his approach, but has so far only received full-throated support for his stance from the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Anwar Gargash.
Macron also spoke on the phone to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to reassure him that he distinguished between terrorism and extremism on the one hand, and Islam and Islamic thinking on the other.
Many Arab leaders have condemned the killing of the French teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October, the subsequent killings in Nice and the latest murders on Monday night in Vienna, but the degree of explicit and implicit criticism of Macron’s stance on freedom of expression has startled some French officials.