![]() Le Pen, it is far from clear that they will also drive them to support Mr. ![]() If such comments drive Muslim voters away from Ms. Le Pen has said there would be no more difficulty in applying the ban, and fining women who wear head scarves, than there is enforcing the use of seatbelts. Whether the ban would also apply to women choosing head scarves as fashion statements à la Audrey Hepburn is unclear. Le Pen appeared to hedge a little on Sunday, saying that the issue is a “complex problem” and that her proposed ban would be debated in the National Assembly. It is based on the battle against Islamist ideologies.” She continued: “This ban is not based on the concept of laïcité. It is the uniform of an ideology, not of a religion.” “The head scarf is in reality an Islamist uniform, it is not a Muslim uniform, and that makes all the difference. Le Pen retorted in an interview with France Inter radio. In an interview with Franceinfo radio last week, he said she would also have to ban the use of the “kippa, the cross and other religious symbols” in public or she would be discriminating among believers. Le Pen of undermining the principles of laïcité and the Constitution itself with the proposed head scarf ban. Debate has raged over whether parents accompanying school trips should be allowed to wear head scarves, but attempts to stop them have failed. Civil servants are also barred from doing so on the job. But there is no ban on the head scarf.įrench laws prohibit wearing ostentatious religious symbols - the head scarf is considered one - in schools. Since 2011 it has been illegal to wear a face-covering niqab, or a burqa covering the entire body, in public. ![]() Intensely attached to its model of a secular society, known as laïcité, which is supposed to subsume all men and women into the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship, France has been reluctant to acknowledge failures that have left many Muslim immigrants and their descendants in dismal housing projects on the periphery of big cities, feeling no viable French identity or future. A growing Muslim presence is seen by the extreme-right as a mortal threat to French identity, and this view has gained a foothold in the political mainstream. But it finds itself in a fracturing debate over Islam. Where those votes now go matters.įrance is a secular republic and in theory a nondiscriminatory society where people are free to believe, or not, in any god they wish. In the first round, about 70 percent of French Muslims voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who was narrowly eliminated, according to a study by the Ifop polling institute. Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron confront each other in a tight race, religious freedom, particularly for the Muslims who make up about 8 percent of the population, has emerged as a pivotal issue. France has a troubled relationship with Islam because of its colonial history in Algeria and several jihadist terror attacks in recent years. In the country with the largest Muslim population in western Europe, what a woman wears on her head matters. Le Pen insisted that in many French neighborhoods women who do not wear a veil are “separated, isolated and judged.” Her choice to wear a head scarf was made, she said, “when I was an older woman,” as a sign of “being a grandmother.” Ms. She says that it is “an Islamist uniform,” or a sign of adherence to an extremist, anti-Western interpretation of the Muslim faith. Le Pen, a nationalist with an anti-immigrant agenda, has vowed to ban the wearing of the head scarf in public if she is elected in the second round of voting next Sunday. “What is the head scarf doing in politics?” the woman demanded. PARIS - A Muslim woman in a blue and white hijab confronted Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, as she made her way through a crowd in the southern town of Pertuis last week.
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