It feels strange to hear Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan talk about secular values and lecture French President Emmanuel Macron on racism.

There has been an outburst in Muslim countries against Macron’s comments about Islamist terrorism in wake of the gruesome beheading of Samuel Paty, a teacher who was killed for showing students caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Erdogan, who likes to pose as the leader of the entire Islamic world, decried “rising Islamophobia” under Macron’s watch.

“What problem does this person called Macron have with Muslims and Islam? Macron needs treatment on a mental level,” Erdogan recently said.

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Pakistani premier Khan, who is known for his deep admiration of Erdogan, followed suit. “This is a time when President Macron could have put a healing touch and denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarization and marginalization that inevitably leads to radicalization,” Khan wrote on Twitter.

Read more: DW