French President Emmanuel Macron has said his country is fighting "extremism, not Islam".
Responding to an article in the Financial Times, he said his statement was misrepresented and that the newspaper's website had since removed the material.
In a letter to the newspaper, Emmanuel Macron said the British newspaper had accused him of "defaming French Muslims for electoral purposes and promoting an atmosphere of fear and suspicion."
"I will not allow France to claim that its government is promoting racism against Muslims," he said.
The article, written by a Financial Times correspondent, alleged that Emmanuel Macron's condemnation of "Islamic extremism" was in fact a "hostile environment" for French Muslims.
The Financial Times later removed the article from the website and replaced it with a corrected article stating "there were factual errors."
Boycotts and protests against French products began in the Muslim world over President Emmanuel Macron's controversial statement on blasphemous sketches in France.
After protests and boycotts, the French president told Al Jazeera over the weekend that he "now understands that sketches can be so painful for some people."
But citing extremist attacks in France since 2015, he warned in a letter this week that there were still "foundations" for extremism in France.
"In some districts and on the internet, radical Islamist groups are teaching our children to hate democracy and demanding that they ignore the country's laws," he wrote.
He said the government would introduce a bill in December to strengthen the 1905 law formally separating the church and the state in France.
He announced strict supervision of schools and strict control over foreign funding of mosques.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that what is the problem of the so-called French president with Islam and Muslims?
"Macron needs psychiatric treatment," he said.
According to a report by the British news agency Reuters, a teacher in a French school this month showed blasphemous sketches published in 2006 by the controversial French magazine Charlie Hebdo during a lesson on freedom of expression.
A few days later, a man beheaded the teacher, who was shot dead by police on the spot, and the case was linked to a terrorist organization.
Following the incident, the French president called the teacher who showed the blasphemous sketches a "hero" and embodied the values of the French Republic, and awarded him France's highest civilian honor.
According to the British newspaper Independent News, the French president himself attended the last rites of the said teacher in Paris, after which the blasphemous sketches published by Charlie Hebdo were displayed for several hours on the town hall buildings of two French cities.
According to the French news website The Local, in the ceremony held in the memory of the teacher, the President of France has clearly stated that "we will not stop making sketches".
A day earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had reacted sharply to his French counterpart's controversial policies on Muslims, saying that Emmanuel Macron needed a "mental examination".
In a televised speech in the Anatolian city of Kayseri, the Turkish president said what can be said about a head of state who treats millions of members of different religious groups like this: He must first have his brain examined. ۔
This is not the first time that an anti-Islamic statement has been made by the French president. Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled France's defense plans against secular "fundamentalist Islam". He also made anti-Islamic statements.
Emmanuel Macron unveiled a plan to "defend" France's secular values against "fundamentalist Islam" and announced tighter surveillance of schools and better control of foreign funding for mosques.
He named countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, stressing the need to "liberate Islam from foreign influences" in France.
To that end, he said, the government would investigate foreign funding for mosques and ban imams from going abroad for training or hosting foreign preachers on French soil.
Reacting to this, scholars from Al-Azhar University, Egypt's leading Islamic institution, called French President Emmanuel Macron's statement on "Islamist separatism" a "racist" and "hate speech."
Earlier last month, the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo
