In this day and age, the boundaries of truth are constantly being pushed in new and unexpected directions. And France is no exception to the rule.
Unless you’re living under a rock, you might have seen headlines in the past 24 hours proclaiming that French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen had canceled her meeting with Lebanon’s top Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Adbellatif Deryan, after being asked to wear a headscarf in his presence.
The leader of the National Front arrived at Sheikh Abdellatif Deryan’s office in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Tuesday and was offered a white shawl to cover her hair.
While multiple cameras were filming, she promptly refused, turned around and retreated to her car. Talking to reporters as she walked away from the meeting, Le Pen proudly said that she would not “cover [herself] up” because she considered the headscarf “a symbol of a woman’s submission.”
She added that she hadn’t been required to wear a headscarf when she met Egypt’s top cleric, Grand Mufti of Egypt’s Al Azhar, in 2015.
“I met the grand mufti of Al-Azhar,” she said. “The highest Sunni authority didn’t have this requirement, but it doesn’t matter…You can pass on my respects to the grand mufti, but I will not cover myself up.” The meeting was henceforth cancelled.
It all sounds like a laudable act of defiance in the face of religious conservatism, doesn’t it? Except that the incident was carefully orchestrated by LePen’s clan as a publicity stunt.
First of all, Le Pen did in fact know very well that she would be asked to don a headscarf upon arrival. This had been communicated to her ahead of the meeting and posed as a non-negotiable condition for meeting the Grand Mufti.
In a statement released on Tuesday the Grand Mufti’s press officer confirmed this saying it “had informed the presidential candidate, through one of her assistants, of the need to cover her head when she meets his eminence, according to the protocol assumed by Dar al-Fatwa” Lebanon’s top Sunni authority.
“Dar al-Fatwa officials were surprised by her refusal to conform to this well-known rule,” the statement added.
Secondly, whilst Le Pen compared her refusal to wear the headscarf to Michelle Obama’s decision to show up unveiled during her state visit to Saudi Arabia in 2015, the two moves are barely commensurate.
Saudi Arabia is a country where women are forced under state law to cover their hair in public—most of them wear niqabs—and where they are not allowed to drive or appear in public without a male accompanying them. While common, headscarves are not mandatory in Lebanon and many women in fact do not wear them.
One was a state visit, the other a planned visit with a religious leader.
Feigning that she was presented with a “fait accompli” is misleading at best and dishonest and manipulative at worst. While her blunt gesture did a good job of sending a message to her conservative base and supporters at home that she would not subject herself to the “oppressive” customs of a Muslim-majority country (French law currently bans headscarves for high school children and civil servants; Le Pen wants headscarves banished from all public places), as pundits pointed out, it was also a clever way to detract from the growing corruption scandal she is currently facing.
The beleaguered FN leader is embroiled in a financial sleaze case in France, where she is facing allegations of misuse of funds allocated to her as a member of the European Parliament.
French police on Monday searched the far right party’s HQ in Paris in relation to the investigation into accusations that she gave her body guard a ‘fake job’ as a EU parliamentary aide.
As Yasser Louati, an activist based in Paris, told Al-Jazeera “This is a trap and a setup” that can easily been seen as “an attempt to divert attention from the legal consequences of her actions over the past few years.”
Well tried Marine, but we’re not falling for it.