Head of far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) Marine Le Pen addresses a press conference at the party headquarters in Nanterre, near Paris, on Friday.—AFP
PARIS: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Friday 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 52-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.”