How about outright denying it? Is that "tiptoeing around it"?

Although he described the opponents as exerting “obscurantism and fundamentalism” and their “totally fallacious” views on the film promoting same-sex relationships and its views on women, Sarrabeyrouse denounced “with even greater firmness the political exploitation, speculation and racist Islamophobic hatred that has been pouring out over the past 24 hours from the right and the far right”.

“The city’s social media and my own are flooded with insulting, racist and especially Islamophobic messages. The words of today’s Minister of the Interior will not extinguish this flame of racist hatred, unleashed without any limits, of which I am the target as much as my population,” he said