Maadi slams French president’s ignorance

Popular Iranian actor Peyman Maadi has condemned French president Emanuel Macron’s speech about Islam and its state in today’s world.

In a speech, Macron stated that Islam “is in crisis all over the world today” and Maadi, in an online interview with a French TV channel, said the president’s speech was out of ignorance.

In reply to a question about immigration to France and the difference between immigrants’ integration in the society of the US and France, Maadi said, “they (French people) think this national identity is based on republican ideas of universalism, equality and French secularism (Laïcité).

But really, is it? Let me put the question like this: I just wonder how a young French woman from the suburbs of Paris feels about the question.

We all know Muslims are the largest minority community in France and the president of France ignorantly calls Islam a religion that is in crisis all over the world.

The identity that cannot open up and welcome other ways of life is an identity in crisis. This expectation for integration itself is a problematic issue, I think.

We should not put pressure on the individual immigrants to integrate, instead we should ask how we can open up, as a society, and embrace our fellow human beings. That should be our approach.”

In answer to the question that if he feels powerless about the immigration crisis, he stated, “No, I don’t feel powerless, I feel angry. I feel sad. I feel hopeless. Nobody puts his children on a boat and risks their lives, unless they feel the ocean is safer than the land, but the European governments penalize the people who try to help refugees. Doesn’t it remind you of the situation of refugees in WWII? Aren’t we making the same mistakes? Yes we are.

We forget to review the history of refugee crisis. What are these people escaping from? War? Genocide? Or drought? Why are these countries in such a situation? What happened to the people 50 or 100 years ago that made them ended up like this?

I don’t feel powerless. I feel I can change the world, maybe a little change. I can make a change because I’m an actor.”

Born in 1972, Maadi graduated in Metallurgical Engineering from Karaj Azad University.

He started his film career as a screenwriter in the late 2000s. He has written screenplay for several successful Iranian movies, including ‘Swan Song’, ‘Wedding Dinner’, ‘The Snow on the Pines’, and ‘Bomb a Love Story’.

He started his acting career in Asghar Farhadi’s ‘About Elly’ in 2009. Since then, he has been in a number of award-winning movies such as ‘A Separation’ which won him Best Actor in leading role at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany.

Some other movies which he has been in are ‘Tales’, ‘Melbourne’, ‘Life and a Day’, ‘Bomb a Love Story’, and ‘Suddenly Tree’.

Besides the aforementioned titles, he has been in a number of international movies such as ‘Camp X-Ray’, ‘Last Knight’, and ’13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi’.

Maadi has tried his hand at film directing and has made some titles so far, some of which are ‘The Snow on the Pines’ and ‘Bomb a Love Story’.

PR/MG