One tweet was removed from Mahathir Mohamad’s controversial Twitter thread.
Zahim Mohd/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Twitter removed a tweet from former prime minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad for violating its rules banning the glorification of violence.
In the tweet, which was part of a longer thread about Muslims living in France, Mohamad said that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” The thread appears to have been sparked by a suspected terrorist incident in the French city of Nice on Thursday, in which three people were killed in a knife attack.
The tweet served as a catalyst for anger on Twitter, with many people responding to Mohamad using Islamophobic memes and insults.
Cedric O, France’s secretary of state for the digital economy, condemned Mohamad’s tweet and called for Twitter to suspend his account. “If not, Twitter would be an accomplice to a formal call for murder,” he said in his own tweet.
Twitter left the tweet up for more than three hours on Thursday morning before taking action. At first it added a disclaimer in which it explained that the tweet violated its rules but was being left up because it was in the public interest. The company later decided to remove the tweet completely, although the rest of the thread remains.
According to a spokesperson for Twitter, the tweet was removed for violating its policy on glorification of violence. The policy stipulates that users may not share content on the service that includes violent threats against an individual or a group of people, regardless of context.
Mohamad couldn’t be reached for comment. He is the latest figure on the world stage to fall foul of Twitter’s rules, after President Donald Trump had several tweets obscured for violating the company’s policies regarding the spread of coronavirus misinformation.
Ousted as Malaysia’s leader in February, Mohamad began his thread with the capitalized statement “respect others.” He then referenced a separate terrorist attack in Paris earlier this month, in which a teacher was beheaded outside his school after showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Mohamad said that killing someone is “not an act that as a Muslim I would approve,” but later added that Muslims were within their rights to kill French people due to historical injustices. “By and large the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law,” he added. “Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings.”
The attack in Nice was one of two that happened in France on Thursday, and the third such terror-linked incident to occur in the country this month, including the Paris attack. The incident also coincided with rising tensions across the country as it prepares to go back into lockdown following a spike in coronavirus cases.
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