Twitter, on October 29, removed former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's tweet, for violating its rules banning glorification of violence. The tweet was incidentally pulled down shortly after a violent knife attack in Nice, France that left three people dead.
In a series of tweets, Mahathir spoke about the recent attack that took the life of a French teacher in Paris and said “killing is not an act that, as a Muslim, I would approve.”
However, in another tweet, Mahathir said that "Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past". The remark led to an outburst on the social media platform with many users calling out the former Malaysian prime minister.
Initially, Twitter had only labelled the tweet with a disclaimer suggesting that it was violating its rules but was deliberately kept up in public interest.
The social media giant later deleted the tweet altogether, leaving behind a note that it “violated the Twitter rules”. However, it left other tweets in the thread intact.
Mahathir served as the Malaysian prime minister between 1981 and 2003 and again between 2018 and March 2020.
Screenshot of the note left by Twitter on former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's deleted tweet.
This comes amid French President Emmanuel Macron's criticism of radical Islam after a school teacher was beheaded by an 18-year old Chechen refugee in France for showing caricatures depicting Prophet Mohammed in class.
Macron’s comments have remarks about Islam have led to an uproar in many parts of the Islamic world, including Malaysia.
