The union leader said the products were withdrawn in response to “repeated insults” against the Prophet.
Kuwait / Paris:
Kuwait’s retail co-ops boycotted French products over use of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a French school class on free speech whose teacher was later beheaded by a Chechen teenager .
In Saudi Arabia, the Arab world‘s largest economy, a hashtag calling for a boycott of the French supermarket Carrefour was the second trendiest on Sunday.
France’s foreign ministry said there had been calls to boycott French goods, including food, in several countries in the Middle East, as well as calls for anti-France protests over the cartoons.
Muslims regard any portrayal of the prophet as blasphemous.
“These boycott calls are unfounded and should cease immediately, along with all attacks against our country, which are pushed by a radical minority,” the ministry said.
The ministry also called on the authorities to denounce such boycott actions in order to help French companies and ensure the safety of French citizens.
In Kuwait, the Non-Governmental Union of Consumer Cooperative Societies, which brings together more than 70 establishments, published the boycott directive in a circular on October 23. Several cooperatives visited by Reuters on Sunday had emptied the shelves of items such as hair and beauty products made by French companies.
Union leader Fahd Al-Kishti told Reuters the products were withdrawn in response to “repeated insults” against the prophet.
Cooperatives, some the size of hypermarkets, sell government-subsidized commodities and account for a large part of Kuwait’s retail trade. Kuwait’s imports from France amounted to 255 million dinars ($ 834.70 million) in 2019, according to the Kuwait Central Bureau of Statistics.
Kuwait’s foreign minister, who met with the French ambassador on Sunday, condemned the October 16 murder as a horrific crime, but stressed the need to avoid insulting religion in official and political remarks that “ignite hatred, enmity and racism,” the ministry tweeted.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also said on Sunday that President Emmanuel Macron had “attacked Islam” by encouraging the display of the cartoons.
Macron said on Twitter that France respects all differences in the spirit of peace, but does not accept hate speech and stands for reasonable debate. “We will never give in,” Macron said.
France recalled its ambassador to Turkey on Saturday after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Macron, who this month declared war on “Islamist separatism”, needed mental help with his attitude towards Muslims.
The beheading, in which the assailant was shot, carried echoes of the 2015 Islamist attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after reposting the cartoons.
After a Danish newspaper first published the cartoons in 2005, protests and boycotts against Danish products swept across the Islamic world.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
