Mahathir Mohamad tweet: Does Malaysia's ex-PM want Muslims to 'kill millions of French people'?

Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad shot a series of tweets Thursday night, outraged at the growing Islamophobia and stressing that freedom of expression did not include "insulting other people".

Mahathir's tweets came hours after two terrorist attacks in France, one of which left three people dead in a stabbing spree outside a church in southern city of Nice.

The former Malaysia premier also referred to a French teacher who showed his pupils cartoons of Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and was beheaded for it in Paris — a move that sparked protests across France.

The French protests, however, were countered by demonstrations — on a much larger scale — across the Muslim world, including in Turkey and Pakistan, over blasphemy and the rising Islamophobia in the West.

'Angry people kill' and 'Muslims have a right to be angry'

The outspoken 95-year-old, who ruled Malaysia for close to a quarter of a century, had said "angry people kill" regardless of their religion. "The French in the course of their history has killed millions of people.

"Many were Muslims. Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past," Mahathir added in his thread on Twitter, which, following shock across the Internet, was pulled down by the social media company.

"By and large the Muslims have not applied the 'eye for an eye' law. Muslims don't," he had said, warning that the French shouldn't either.

But the question everyone should be asking right now is: Does Malaysian PM really want Muslims to "kill millions of French people"?

Related: Twitter deletes Mahathir's tweet saying Muslims have 'a right' to 'massacre millions of French'

And it is this question that brings one to wonder what exactly was Mahathir referring to when he had written that the French had killed "millions of people" in the past.

The answer lies in the genocide during the Algerian independence and the Holocaust.

Executions, bombing, and shelling on Muslim villages

France had Algeria as its colony for more than 130 years until the country declared independence. During the Sétif and Guelma massacres, which preceded the Algerian War of Independence, France and its colonies were accused of killing an estimated 6,000-30,000 people, many of whom were Muslims.

Starting the same day as Germany surrendered during the World War II, French colonial gendarmerie — police — and protesters clashed in Sétif and Guelma, with chaos continuing for almost a week before France ordered its army and police to suppress the rebellion by Muslim civilians.

The French military carried out executions, bombing, and shelling on Muslim villages, whereas vigilantes lynched or shot dead Muslims who were either detained or walking in the streets.

Once the rebellion was suppressed, the French leadership executed almost a 100 of the 4,560 arrested Muslims.

Arabic is my language, Islam is my religion

Later, during the course of the struggle for independence, some 300,000 Algerians were killed and many more wounded, displaced or categorised missing. A revolutionary slogan that many still remember from that time was: "Arabic is my language, Islam is my religion, Algeria is my country."

Algerians now accuse France of having launched a war against their mosques and seminaries.

According to Anadolu Agency, which cited the NGO Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights' 2017 statistics, the total number of victims of the French colonial rule was estimated to be more than 10 million.

This includes the casualties from France's invasion of Algeria in 1830, leading to the genocide of between 0.5-1 million Algerians and comprising crimes such as mass rapes and massacres, among other brutalities.

Holocaust gas chambers a 'detail' of history, right-wing French politician

Algerian historians also claim that France's colonial authorities carried out 57 nuclear experiments in the Algerian desert from 1960-66, with Paris saying the number was 17. These experiments were estimated to have killed almost 42,000 Algerians and injured thousands of others due to radioactivity.

Separately, with respect to the Holocaust, Jean-Marie Le Pen — the father of former French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen who was ousted from the National Front, the hardline right-wing party he founded, by his own daughter, has been fined thrice for terming the gas chambers used to kill Jews a mere "detail" of history.

Not only that, but in his youth, the then 29-year-old lieutenant was allegedly part of a torture campaign while leading a special military intelligence unit during the Battle of Algiers, where he reportedly participated in the electrocution, beatings, rape, and water tortures, according to his victims.

Torture centre where Algerians were murdered

According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, the Vichy regime — or the French State — actively collaborated with the Nazi regime, arrested some 13,000 Jewish men, women, and children, and deported the majority to Auschwitz. "Some 77,000 Jews living on French territory perished in concentration camps and killing centers," it added.

In 2000, French Army general Paul Aussaresses admitted and justified that systematic torture techniques were used during the Algerian war, as well as acknowledged assassinations of Algerian leaders that were masked as suicides.

French military officer Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard, known for his involvement in 'unconventional' warfare, had said torture was a "necessary evil". In 2000, Bigeard confirmed that he had been stationed at a designated torture centre where Algerians were systematically murdered.

Colonisation a 'crime against humanity', says Macron

It is noteworthy that although France never issued an official apology, French President Emmanuel Macron, while running for elections, risked and eventually faced the ire of the country's conservative population by terming colonisation a "crime against humanity" during a visit to Algeria in 2017.

"It’s truly barbarous and it’s part of a past that we need to confront by apologising to those against whom we committed these acts," Macron had said.

To see why Mahathir's comments caused such upset across the world — both physical and online — one must understand what transpired on Thursday.

France knife attack, Jeddah stabbing attempt

Three people were killed at a church in Nice, with the attacker slitting the throat of at least one, in what authorities were treating as the latest extremist assault to rock the country.

French anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-François Ricard later said the suspect was a 21-year-old Tunisian national, a migrant who arrived in France carrying a document issued by the Italian Red Cross. Police sources identified him as Brahim Aioussaoi.

Read more: France knife attack leaves at least three dead, say police

In the other attack, in French city of Avignon, police shot dead a man who threatened them with a handgun.

In yet another attack, this one in Jeddah, a Saudi man was arrested for attacking and wounding a guard "with sharp tool" at the French consulate in the Kingdom. The guard "was taken to hospital and his life is not in danger".

France announced it was deploying an additional extra 4,000 troops for the protection of churches and schools.

Twitter deletes Mahathir's tweet 'glorifying violence'

Shortly afterwards, Mahathir posted his Twitter thread, with the micro-blogging platform initially declining to remove the comments but finally doing so following a furious reaction from the French government.

The French junior minister for digital affairs, Cedric O, said in a tweet in French and English: "I just spoke with the MD (managing director) of @TwitterFrance.

Also read: Saudi man arrested for attempted stabbing of guard at French consulate in Jeddah

"The account of @chedetofficial must be immediately suspended. If not, @twitter would be an accomplice to a formal call for murder."

Twitter initially flagged Mahathir's tweet about killing "millions of French people" as "glorifying violence" but did not remove it.

However, shortly afterwards, the tweet was deleted entirely, and Twitter told AFP it was because the comments "violated policy regarding glorification of violence."

Mahathir never made a direct reference to the attack in Nice however.

France a 'country of tolerance', French imams appeal for calm

Late night, on the other hand, French president Macron travelled to the scene and denounced the religious "terrorist attack". The country, he vowed, would stand firm against violent extremists.

Urging people of all religions to unite and not "give in to the spirit of division", he said France will not "give up on our values".

In addition, many French imams have also appealed for calm. The director-general of the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM), Abdallah Zekri, denounced Thursday's attack.

French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian proffered "a message of peace to the Muslim world", insisting France was a "country of tolerance."

Since January 2015, when 12 people were killed at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, more than 250 people have been murdered in extremist attacks on French soil.