FRENCH FAR-RIGHT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MARINE LE PEN CALLS FOR BAN ON MUSLIM HEADSCARVES

Sat 30 January 2021:

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen today proposed a ban on Muslim headscarves in all public places, seeking to build on a record recent poll putting her almost neck-and-neck with President Emmanuel Macron.

The hijab policy, which would be contested in court and would almost certainly be ruled unconstitutional, saw the 53-year-old return to a familiar campaign theme 15 months from the country’s 2022 presidential election.

“I consider that the headscarf is an Islamist item of clothing,” Le Pen told reporters at a press conference where she proposed a new law to ban “Islamist ideologies” which she called “totalitarian and murderous.”

Since taking over from her father, Le Pen has run twice for the French presidency, losing badly in 2017 to political newcomer Macron in a defeat that she took months to recover from.

But recent polling shows her closer than ever to her ultimate prize and has led to a rash of new speculation about whether the anti-EU, anti-immigration populist could finally enter the Elysée Palace.

The poll conducted online by Harris Interactive suggested that if a final-round presidential run-off were held today Le Pen would garner 48 percent while Macron would be re-elected with 52 percent, Le Parisien newspaper reported.

It suggested National Rally leader Le Pen would narrowly beat Macron in the first round, gaining 26 to 27 percent of the votes against his 23 to 24 percent.

If accurate, the survey indicates that Macron and Le Pen are set to duel for the presidency for the second time.

She faced controversy at the time after she cancelled a meeting with Lebanon’s most senior Muslim cleric in Beirut because she objected to covering her hair.

Her ‘political gesture’ against the Grand Mufti was aimed at asserting French secular values in Lebanon, where the main religions are Islam and Christianity.

He said Le Pen was benefiting from frustration and anger over the pandemic, with France on the verge of a third lockdown, but also the beheading of a French school teacher by Abdullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old of Chechen origin, for showing controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammad to his students during one of his classes on freedom of expression last October. Islamophobic attacks in France rose by over 50% in 2020.

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