As ultimate vote nears in France, a debate over Islam and headscarves

A Muslim girl in a blue and white hijab confronted Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, as she made her approach by way of a crowd within the southern city of Pertuis, France, final week. “What is the head scarf doing in politics?” the lady demanded.

Le Pen, a nationalist with an anti-immigrant agenda, has vowed to ban the carrying of the top scarf in public if she is elected within the second spherical of voting subsequent Sunday. She says that it’s “an Islamist uniform,” or an indication of adherence to an extremist, anti-Western interpretation of the Muslim religion.

The girl who argued with Le Pen was having none of this. Her option to put on a head scarf was made, she mentioned, “when I was an older woman,” as an indication of “being a grandmother.” Le Pen insisted that in lots of French neighborhoods girls who don’t put on a veil are “separated, isolated and judged.”

In the nation with the most important Muslim inhabitants in western Europe, what a lady wears on her head issues. France has a troubled relationship with Islam due to its colonial historical past in Algeria and a number of other jihadi terror assaults lately. As Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron confront one another in a good race, non secular freedom, significantly for the Muslims who make up about 8% of the inhabitants, has emerged as a pivotal subject.

Macron, who has known as Le Pen’s plan “an extremist project,” has however angered some members of the Muslim neighborhood, primarily by way of laws designed to fight what he calls “Islamist separatism.” That regulation, handed final yr, has been used to shut some mosques and Islamic associations accused of fostering radicalism. It was designed partly to attract right-wing voters to his centrist camp.

Macron, whose lead in polls has widened barely over the previous week to 53.5% towards Le Pen’s 46.5%, had his personal confrontation with a younger French girl carrying a hijab throughout a marketing campaign cease in Strasbourg, France, final week.

“Are you a feminist?” he requested. “Are you for the equality of women and men?”

When the lady answered sure to each questions, and mentioned her head scarf was chosen, not imposed, Macron, clearly alluding to Le Pen, mentioned this was the “the best answer to all the stupidity I keep hearing.”

It was one other instance of Macron, who scarcely campaigned earlier than the primary spherical of voting April 10, adjusting his message to attraction to blocs of voters who’ve felt betrayed by him over the previous 5 years — the Muslim neighborhood and the left.

In the primary spherical, about 70% of French Muslims voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who was narrowly eradicated, in response to a examine by the Ifop polling institute. Where these votes now go issues.

France is a secular republic and in principle a nondiscriminatory society the place persons are free to consider, or not, in any god they need. But it finds itself in a fracturing debate over Islam. A rising Muslim presence is seen by the extreme-right as a mortal menace to French id, and this view has gained a foothold within the political mainstream.

Intensely connected to its mannequin of a secular society, often called laïcité, which is meant to subsume all women and men into the rights and tasks of French citizenship, France has been reluctant to acknowledge failures which have left many Muslim immigrants and their descendants in dismal housing initiatives on the periphery of huge cities, feeling no viable French id or future.

Since 2011 it has been unlawful to put on a face-covering niqab, or a burqa masking the complete physique, in public. But there is no such thing as a ban on the top scarf.

French legal guidelines prohibit carrying ostentatious non secular symbols — the top scarf is taken into account one — in colleges. Civil servants are additionally barred from doing so on the job. Debate has raged over whether or not dad and mom accompanying college journeys needs to be allowed to put on headscarves, however makes an attempt to cease them have failed.

Strongly held French emotions in regards to the equality of women and men, about secularism, and about its supposedly colorblind society lie behind the virulence of the dialogue of those points. So does unacknowledged or overt prejudice.

Macron has accused Le Pen of undermining the ideas of laïcité and the structure itself with the proposed head scarf ban. In an interview with Franceinfo radio final week, he mentioned she would additionally need to ban the usage of the “kippa, the cross and other religious symbols” in public or she could be discriminating amongst believers.

Not so, Le Pen retorted in an interview with France Inter radio. “The head scarf is in reality an Islamist uniform, it is not a Muslim uniform, and that makes all the difference. It is the uniform of an ideology, not of a religion.”

She continued: “This ban is not based on the concept of laïcité. It is based on the battle against Islamist ideologies.”

However, Le Pen appeared to hedge a bit Sunday, saying that the problem is a “complex problem” and that her proposed ban could be debated within the National Assembly.

Whether the ban would additionally apply to girls selecting headscarves as style statements a la Audrey Hepburn is unclear.

Le Pen has mentioned there could be no extra issue in making use of the ban, and fining girls who put on headscarves, than there’s implementing the usage of seat belts.

If such feedback drive Muslim voters away from Le Pen, it’s removed from clear that they may also drive them to assist Macron within the second spherical. Many first-round voters for Mélenchon, Muslims amongst them, have mentioned they are going to abstain April 24.

In a radio debate final week with Macron, Sara El Attar, the founding father of Hashtag Ambition and a communication coach, mentioned feedback by Macron suggesting headscarves harm relations between women and men had angered her as a Muslim girl who chooses to put on a head scarf.

French girls “have been punished in recent years for a simple scarf, without any leader deigning to denounce this injustice,” she mentioned.

Further envenoming the talk on non secular freedom, Le Pen has promised to ban the ritual slaughter of animals required for the manufacturing of halal and kosher meat, a place rejected by Macron as heralding a France the place “Muslims and Jews would be unable to eat as their religion instructs.”

In a joint assertion final week, Haïm Korsia, the chief rabbi of France, and Élie Korchia, the president of the Israelite Central Consistory, mentioned such a measure would, for Jews and Muslims alike, be “a serious attack on the free practice of religion that is a foundation of our constitution.” They urged voters to again Macron.

Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the Union of French Mosques, mentioned ritual slaughter was “an aspect of the religious freedom” assured by the structure. While condemning Le Pen, he didn’t say which approach Muslims ought to vote.

The girl who confronted Le Pen in Pertuis famous that her father had served within the French army for 15 years. The huge cemetery at Verdun, scene of probably the most devastating battles of World War I, has a complete part for French Muslims who died preventing for France.

As the talk over Islam’s place in France rages, this army service is seldom recalled, to the purpose that the place of Éric Zemmour — the now-eliminated hard-right candidate who held that Islam and France have been merely “incompatible” — drew virtually 2.5 million votes within the first spherical.

He has urged his followers to vote for Le Pen within the second spherical.

This article initially appeared in The New York Times.