Terrorism in France and the Hypocrisy of Erdogan and Khan
By Rohan Rajesh
In the middle of October, Samuel Paty, a history teacher, was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee. Paty’s crime? Showing Charlie Hebdo’s infamous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class to discuss freedom of expression. Paty had been doing this every year since the Hebdo attacks and consistently allowed Muslim students to exit the classroom during these discussions. You likely remember that Charlie Hebdo journalists were slaughtered by terrorists in Paris in 2015 over those cartoons.
French President Emmanuel Macron stood by Paty, supported free speech, and refused to condemn the caricatures. Immediately, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan chose to condemn Macron and all of Europe for “Islamophobia” rather than the beheading itself. Erdogan even went so far as to question Macron’s mental health, and calls to boycott French goods have been heard across the Muslim world.
To be sure, Macron’s comments were likely inevitable given the upcoming presidential election in France. Centrist Macron is a staunch secularist and is neck and neck with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the polls. Measures and rhetoric against Islamist terrorism are popular in a country that has suffered 36 Islamic State-inspired attacks in the past eight years, including two that together killed more than 200 people. However, Erdogan’s and Khan’s claim that Macron (and Europe in general) is racist is deeply hypocritical because both have made lives for minorities in their own countries miserable.
Since taking office in 2000, Erdogan has systematically tried to erase Turkey’s secular and democratic heritage. Most recently, the Turkish government converted the Hagia Sophia (which was first a Byzantine church, then an Ottoman mosque, and then a museum) back into a mosque, ignoring the sentiments of millions of Christians. Apparently, Erdogan does not care about Christianophobia. Erdogan has also continued and intensified the persecution of the Kurdish minority. Many Turks have spoken out against Erdogan’s Islamist policies, but he has sought to crush that dissent with an iron fist. Erdogan’s comments conveniently come in the face of a sinking Turkish economy and tensions with France and NATO over policy in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, and Turkey’s exploration of natural resources in disputed Mediterranean waters.
Pakistan’s Imran Khan – a frequent ally of Erdogan – is no better. While condemning Islamophobia in India and the West, he has stood by while Pakistanis of several minority faiths (including Christians, Hindus, Shi’ites, and Ahmadiyyas) continue to be persecuted. However, it should come as no surprise that Khan condemns blaspheming against Islam when Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to be terrorized by the country’s notorious blasphemy laws. While Khan sought to lecture Macron on the correct way to prevent radicalization, Pakistan has been a hearth for radical groups since at least the 1970s. Khan (known to his critics as “Taliban Khan”) consistently lets hardline Islamist groups dictate policy whenever they violently protest. For example, when the government added internationally renowned Princeton University economics professor Atif Mian to the PM’s Economic Advisory Council, hardline Islamist groups opposed the move, and the government made Mian resign. The reason for this controversy? Mian belonged to the heavily persecuted Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, whom hardline Muslims (and the Constitution of Pakistan) consider heretics.
Finally, while Erdogan and Khan have criticized perceived wrongs committed against French Muslims by Macron, their studious silence on the Chinese Communist Party’s real cultural genocide of Uyghurs goes beyond hypocrisy – it is reprehensible. The case of Turkey is particularly shocking given that Uyghurs are also a Turkic people. Erdogan refused to sign on to resolutions from 22 countries (including NATO allies) and Turkish opposition parties condemning China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. Worse still, an explosive report by The Telegraph revealed that the Turkish government was deporting Uyghur dissidents to third countries who, in turn, deported them to China. Axios and NPR also revealed that Turkish authorities harassed Uyghur dissidents for speaking out against the CCP’s abuses. These dissidents sought refuge in a fellow Turkic, Muslim country and were betrayed.
Why the silence of two leaders who claim to be Muslim leaders and condemn Islamophobia everywhere else? Perhaps it’s because of the billions of dollars China is pouring into Turkey and Pakistan through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Maybe it’s because China does not care about both countries’ authoritarian tendencies as long as they keep the West and India, respectively, on edge. Either way, their condemnation of Macron’s policies in open, democratic France is laughable if they do not condemn one of the worst human rights crises against Muslims in the 21st century.
Leaders like Erdogan and Khan often seek to distinguish between radical Islamism and Islam. Yet their intolerance for free speech and illiberal actions at home are not helping Islam’s image. All major religions are facing a crisis of radicalization and hate, and Islam is no exception. Further, their conditional condemnation of Islamophobia and refusal to condemn terrorism, while unsurprising, discredit any legitimate criticism of the French government’s policy towards French Muslims. If Erdogan and Khan want to improve Islam’s image and secure their mantle as leaders of a modern, global, Islamic society, they had best clean up their own backyards and speak out against human rights abuses for all people everywhere no matter the cost.