Le Pen wants total ban on headscarves
Marine Le Pen, the likely presidential candidate for the Rassemblement National, has announced that if she wins the presidential election in spring 2027 she will introduce a ban on wearing hijabs, or Muslim headscarves, in public spaces, including streets, shops and public transport. Anyone who fails to comply will be penalised, "just like people who don't wear seat belts in their cars", Le Pen's adviser Jean-Philippe Tanguy explained. The French media are incensed.
Media fuelling xenophobic discourse
Xenophobic thinking is becoming increasingly normalised, lawyer Béligh Nabli observes in Nouvel Obs:
“This phenomenon is, of course, closely linked to the shift to the right in the mainstream media (both private and public), which ultimately distorts the democratic process. It's always the same concepts: restore order, re-establish authority, take a harder line, punish, isolate, marginalise. Social complexity is reduced to simple categories, economic and social conflicts are recast as cultural ones, vulnerabilities become threats, and citizens themselves are forced to take sides according to a logic defined by black-and-white thinking.”
An attempt to distract from economic incompetence
The move is simply a diversionary tactic, lawyer Driss Aït Youssef writes in La Tribune:
“Marine Le Pen's appearance at the meeting of French business leaders on 27 August left a deeply worrying impression at a time when the Rassemblement National was specifically trying to demonstrate its economic credibility. The far-right party therefore decided to try to divert the French public's attention to the issue of women wearing veils and proposed banning the wearing of headscarves in public spaces to supposedly combat Muslim religious extremism. ... Candidate Le Pen's failed attempt to bolster her economic credibility – conveniently offset by a political proposal that is unworkable, false and dangerous – sets the country up for a difficult election campaign.”