Anti-Macron protests soar across the world in the aftermath of France beheading

Speaking after teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded for showing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to pupils in a lesson on free speech earlier this month, Macron vowed France would "not give up cartoons" and said Paty "was killed because Islamists want our future".

But Erdogan urged Macron to have "mental checks" for treating "millions of members from different faith groups this way" -- comments which prompted Paris to recall its envoy to Ankara.

The Turkish leader doubled down again contending that Macron "really needs to have checks" and this time also accusing him of being "obsessed with Erdogan day and night". 

Activists and supporters of the Islami Andolon Bangladesh, a Islamist political party, hold a protest march calling for the boycott of French products and denouncing French president Emmanuel Macron for his comments over Prophet Mohammed caricatures, in Dhaka on October 27, 2020.

In Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians burnt portraits of Macron, calling his remarks "an attack and an insult against Islam."

"We condemn the comments of the French President... and whoever offends the Prophet Mohammed, whether through words, actions, gestures or drawings," said Maher al-Huli, a leader of Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the coastal Palestinian enclave.

In Lebanon, pro-Iran Shiite movement Hezbollah condemned the "deliberate insult" to the Prophet.

Macron later took to Twitter to say, "We will not give in, ever," insisting that his country respects "all differences in a spirit of peace."

"We do not accept hate speech and... will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values," he added.

Relations between Macron and Erdogan have become increasingly strained over geopolitical issues ranging from a Greek-Turkish maritime dispute to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called the comments Erdogan made on Saturday "unacceptable" and urged Turkey "to cease this dangerous spiral of confrontation." 

Anger at Macron has spilt over into the streets in several Muslim-majority countries. 

Palestinian demonstrators lift flags and placards during a rally to protest comments of French President Emmanuel Macron over Prophet Mohammed cartoons, in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on October 25, 2020.

Demonstrators hold banners during a protest against France, in Istanbul,Turkey October 27, 2020

Protesters chant slogans and hold signs against France and the French President in Istanbul, on September 13, 2020, during a protest against the reprinting of the cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Earlier this week satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a massacre by Islamist gunmen in 2015, reprinted the controversial images to mark the beginning of the trial of the alleged accomplices in the attack.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused Macron of "attacking Islam".

He tweeted that the French leader "could have put healing touch & denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarisation & marginalisation that inevitably leads to radicalisation."

Iran has summoned a senior French envoy, the charge d'affaires, to protest Paris' defence of the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

French President Macron has strongly defended the right to mock religion following the murder of a French schoolteacher who had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Macron's remarks only fuelled "extremism" and that insulting all Muslims "for the abhorrent crimes of such extremists is an opportunistic abuse of freedom of speech."

Muslim men beat an effigy of Laurent Sourisseau, cartoonist and majority owner of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, during a protest against the reprinting cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad by magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Ahmedabad on September 18, 2020.