PO BAG 1: Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian

21 February 2017

Le Pen refuses headscarf, nixes talks with Lebanon cleric

An aide of Lebanon's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian, right, holds a head scarf as he tries to convince French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, center, to wear it during her meeting with the Mufti but she refused, at Dar al-Fatwa the headquarters of the Sunni Mufti, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017. Le Pen refused to go into a meeting with Lebanon's Grand mufti after his aides asked her to wear a head scarf. Le Pen said she met in the past with the Grand mufti of Egypt's Al-Azhar, one of the world's top Sunni clerics, without wearing a veil. Once she was told it is different here, Le Pen walked toward her car and left.

France's far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen refused to don a headscarf for a meeting with Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim cleric on Tuesday and walked away from the scheduled appointment after a brief squabble at the entrance.

The debacle topped Le Pen's three-day visit to Lebanon, where she held her first campaign meeting with a head of state. It drew the focus to her strong support for secularism and a proposal in her presidential platform that promotes banishing headscarves and other obvious religious symbols in all public spaces.