The former prime minister of Malaysia has waddled into the debacle in reaction to the shock killing and beheading of two people in France in two weeks.

On Oct. 29, Mahathir tweeted an entire chunk of his latest blog post, "Respect Others", and it appears that one part of it has been deemed offensive by Twitter and censored by the platform.

RESPECT OTHERS

1. A teacher in France had his throat slit by an 18-year-old Chechen boy. The killer was angered by the teacher showing a caricature of Prophet Muhammad. The teacher intended to demonstrate freedom of expression.

— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 29, 2020

Readers will have to click the embedded tweet to read the entire thread, but the main part deemed problematic comes towards the end.

What Mahathir tweeted

Mahathir wrote, "... Irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill," adding that the French, in the course of their history, had killed "millions of people", including many Muslims.

"Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past," he continued, going on to say that most Muslims do not apply the "eye-for-an-eye" principle, however.

"Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings."

He ended with this:

"Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years."

Tweet censored

It appears that Twitter has taken issue with Mahathir's tweet about Muslims having the right to kill millions of French people, claiming that it glorifies violence.

At first, Twitter left it up because it deemed that it was in the public's interest for the tweet to remain accessible:

Twitter later backtracked and censored it completely:

You can read what Mahathir wrote (in its entirety) on his blog here.

Background

Another knife attack in France has left multiple people dead in the French city of Nice, including a woman who was beheaded.

This is the second attack that has been branded a terrorist act in France in two weeks.

It appears to have been carried out as a copycat act that could be in response to the aftermath of the first attack, which took place earlier in October.

In the first incident, an 18-year-old radicalised Muslim Chechen beheaded a French school teacher on Oct. 16 for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class about freedom of expression.

Muslims regard depictions of the prophet to be taboo.

In response to the shocking incident, French president Emmanuel Macron came to the defence of the cartoons, calling the school teacher a "hero" and saying that Islam is in crisis.

Macron also vowed to support the French public's right to produce the cartoons.

Macron's defence then triggered protests and calls for a boycott of French products across the Muslim and Arab world, including a huge rally in Bangladesh, and a claim by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Muslims around the world are now "subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II".

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Top images via Mahathir/Facebook, Twitter.