“They will be fined in the same way that seat belts are banned,” Le Pen told RTL radio. “It seems to me that the police will be able to implement this measure very well.”
The presidential candidate of the National Group, heir to the National Front, asserted that “Islamists have used the hijab in the past twenty years as a uniform and a sign of entrenchment” of their ideas.
Le Pen, who will not publicly ban the Jewish kippah, is threatening to beat centrist President Emmanuel Macron in the April 24 election, according to opinion polls that point to the two winning in the first round on Sunday.
In January 2021, Le Pen presented his plan to fight “Islamic ideologies” that he sees as “totalitarian” and “ubiquitous”. His suggestion is to erase it from the public domain as it happens with the veil.
“It is not about attacking freedom of conscience,” said MP Jean-Paul Jarraud, who will be appointed by Le Pen as justice minister if elected. For this former judge, the goal is “an external prohibition of any public expression of opinions which in themselves constitute a serious disturbance of public order”, as is already the case with “Nazism”.
France, a secular country, has banned the use of visible religious signs, such as the headscarf, in schools since 2004, and civil servants are subject to the principle of “neutrality”.
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