On the occasion of the visit of the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi to Paris, Emmanuel Macron praised his attitude to the calls for a boycott of which France was the target in the Muslim world, because of the comments made by the tenant of the Elysee to defend the freedom to caricature.
French President Emmanuel Macron thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, "president of a very large Arab and Muslim country" for his visit to Paris, after an anti-French "hate campaign" in the Muslim world.
France and Egypt are "united" to build a "space of civilization" in which "there is no place for death sentences and hate speech when freedoms are simply expressed," said Emmanuel Macron.
France was recently the subject of boycott calls and protests in the Muslim world after Emmanuel Macron defended the freedom to caricature following the October assassination of a French teacher for showing caricatures of Muhammad in a course on freedom of expression.
"Nothing can be above man and respect for dignity"
Bouncing back on a question from an Egyptian journalist, the two heads of state then launched into detailed explanations, Emmanuel Macron defending freedoms including the right to criticize a religion, while President al-Sisi underlined the character " sacred "of religion which has, according to him," supremacy over human values ".
The Egyptian president recalled that Egypt condemned the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty by a radicalized Chechen Russian refugee, as Cairo "condemns any terrorist attack".
He recognized that "men have the right to have the religion they want and to refuse what they want".
But he said he was worried about the risk, by "making equal the human values we accept and respect and the values of religion", of "hurting millions of people".
Emmanuel Macron then replied by recalling that in France, "we consider that nothing can be above man and respect for the dignity of the human person", stressing that "it is the contribution of the philosophy of the Enlightenment ".