Normal reactions

There are, as you'd expect, a number of clips on MEMRI TV showing reactions from throughout the Muslim world to the beheading of the French teacher.

Sheikh Ali Al-Yousuf of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, on Turkish TV, argued that, from the perspective of Islamic law, one cannot say that the Chechen teen was guilty of a serious crime. The teen’s transgression, rather, was that he took it upon himself to carry out the death penalty for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, whereas the sentence should have been carried out by a shari’a court in an Islamic state. People, said the Sheikh, should focus on the fact that Paty had been teaching people to “hate” the Prophet Muhammad. France is undergoing a crisis, since “Islam is growing because of its moral values.” Which moral values were proudly on display in that Paris suburb last week.

Sudanese Islamic scholar Muhammad Abd Al-Karim, the Secretary-General of the Muslim Scholars Association, said that the main crime had been the insults against the Prophet Muhammad. Arguing that the killing was a natural reaction to provocation, Abd Al-Karim criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for "encouraging" insults against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. He said that if France wanted to stop such reactions it should stop offending Islam and its symbols, such as Prophet Muhammad.

Egyptian TV host Mohamed Abdelbaky rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron, saying that he "offended" the Muslims by describing the beheading as an act of Islamic terrorism, and criticised the French authorities for killing the murderer instead of arresting, interrogating, and trying him to find out the "truth." Claiming that Macron only seeks to prove that Muslims are terrorists, Abdelbaky said that freedom of expression in France should not include speech that is blasphemous against Islam. He also questioned why Paty had been showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the first place.

The prize for all-out weirdness, though, goes to Qatari sociologist Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khazraj Al-Ansari:

The recent murder and beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty in Paris may have been a “fabrication,” according to Al-Ansari, similar to how the 9/11 attacks have been “orchestrated” to distort the reputation of Islam. He said that the Chechen killer may have been paid to carry out this attack, and that Paty may have even been paid to insult the Prophet Muhammad. While he condemned the murder, Al-Ansari suggested that killings and stabbings are “normal reactions” to attacks against the Prophet Muhammad. He also said that Muslim ambassadors to France should be recalled and that French President Emmanuel Macron should be told that France’s freedom of speech laws are “stupid.”