Presidential: the question of the veil bursts into the between-two-towers

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen have been questioned several times in recent days on the question of wearing the veil, a subject on which they cultivate their differences of point of view. debate. Questioned several times during the inter-rounds on the possible ban on the veil worn by Muslim women, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen assumed their differences on this subject regularly put on the table in France. The two candidates clearly position themselves on a theme that underlines for Emmanuel Macron his strict attachment to secularism in the spirit of the 1905 law, and for Marine Le Pen the fight against Islamism, and the fact that she wishes to ban the wearing the veil in the public space. “Feminist” against “Islamist uniform” It was the outgoing president who pressed this button on Tuesday. During a walkabout in Strasbourg, Emmanuel Macron exchanged a few moments with a woman wearing the veil, who had challenged him with this question: “Are you a feminist?”. Emmanuel Macron had deemed it “beautiful” that his interlocutor who declares wearing this religious sign “by choice”, and declares himself a feminist, can ask him such a question. “It’s the best answer to all the nonsense I can hear”, underlined the candidate, tackling his opponent in passing: “on the other side there is Madame Le Pen who says ‘the veil will be prohibited in the public square with me'”. Marine Le Pen indeed proposes, clearly, to sanction a fine for wearing the veil in public places. “It’s like when we didn’t put on the mask, we didn’t put it on, we had a fine. It will be the same,” she said on BFMTV on Wednesday, saying that for her, the veil is “a uniform Islamist uniform which seeks to put pressure on those who do not wear it”. According to her, this ban would intervene as a help for Muslim women, because the veil is “an Islamist uniform which seeks to put pressure on those who do not wear it. don’t wear”. “The veil is a challenge to equality between men and women”, also declared Wednesday on our antenna Jordan Bardella, president of the RN. “The question of the veil is not an obsession” Traveling Thursday to Le Havre, Emmanuel Macron gave a layer on the subject: “There is no country in the world which prohibits the veil on the public highway, you want to be the first?”, He launched. A sentence that was interpreted as a nod to the Muslim electorate, who voted largely in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round (69%), according to an Ifop poll for La Croix. This Friday morning on France Info, Emmanuel Macron also assured that “personally, the question of the veil is not an obsession” and that he had tried during his five-year term “to identify the problem which is that there are people who , distorting this religion or using it, try to get out of the Republic, which is not at all what a woman who wears the veil does”. At the same time, again on BFMTV, Marine Le Pen held to recall that the ban on the veil was only one line in his program against religious fundamentalism in Islam, and explained that he did not understand “why the subject of the veil is re-emerging” in recent days. However, she then underlined that for her, “the ban on the veil is essential”. Later in the day, confronted with a veiled woman in the Vaucluse, who explained to her that she wore her veil by choice, she remained upright in her boots without however wanting to prolong the exchange too much. Positions not easily tenable A few days before the second round, in this debate against Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron therefore poses as a champion of the defense of all religious freedoms. But the candidate is also seeking to settle the criticism provoked by his so-called “fight against separatism” law, accused of having fueled distrust of Islam, which the majority has always defended. Controversy around of the veil by a student at the National Assembly, questions around the wearing of the veil in sports competitions or the desire to ban it for young girls: her five-year term was indeed not short on controversy around this religious sign which digs deep fractures in France. In the camp of Marine Le Pen, this measure against the wearing of the veil is not unanimous either. “It’s a mistake” and it’s “not possible to implement”, had thus slipped Robert Ménard, mayor of Béziers and support of Marine Le Pen, on BFMTV / RMC. Nourished by criticism from the Macron camp, the emergence of this theme also refers the RN candidate to the identity component of her presidential project, which was less highlighted during this campaign. It is likely to make her more divisive in the eyes of the abstainers, or of some of the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from whom she is trying to obtain the votes to win in the second round. Salomé Vincendon Journalist BFMTV