Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamad said Muslims have a right to “kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past” hours after .
The horrific incident, which saw one woman beheaded in the city's Notre Dame church, has been described as an Islamic terrorist attack by French President Emmanual Macron.
In a blog post on Friday, Mr Mahathir, 95, a respected leader in the Muslim world, said he believed in freedom of expression but that it should not be used to insult others.
“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large, the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t,” Mr Mahathir said in a blog post, which he also posted on Twitter.
“Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French,” he said.
Twitter said the message violated its rules and it had removed the tweet.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison condemned the statement from the former Malaysian prime minister as "absolutely absurd" on Sydney radio station 2GB.
"The only thing that should be said today is to completely condemn those attacks and we do," he said on Friday morning.
"The only response is just to be utterly, utterly devastated by this and to stand with those and the families who are suffering just so much."
Australia's former ambassasor to France, Brendan Berne, also denounced the comments on Twitter, describing Mr Mahathir as a "bigot without principles" and a "pious hypocrite".
"We Australians know this man who likes to provoke very well," he wrote in French. "A bigot without principles except that of attacking the Western world."
Several Muslim-majority countries have denounced remarks by French officials, , defending the use of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a French school classroom. The caricatures are seen as blasphemous by Muslims.
The dispute flared after a French teacher who showed his pupils satirical cartoons of the Prophet during a civics lesson was later beheaded in the street by an attacker of Chechen origin.
Police outside the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice after the knife attack. Source: AAP
French officials said the killing was an attack on the core French value of freedom of expression and defended the right to publish the cartoons. Macron has also said he would redouble efforts to stop conservative Islamic beliefs subverting French values.
