Le Pen Says Yarmulke Ban Would Be Fair
French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen clarified her support of a ban on wearing kipahs in public.
Le Pen, leader of the National Front, told French television on Saturday that “Jewish skullcaps are obviously not a problem in our country,” but France has to “ban them in the name of equality,” Haaretz reported. A day earlier she was quoted in an interview with the French daily Le Monde that she supports a ban on wearing kipahs in public in addition to a ban on Muslim headscarves.
“What would people say if I’d only asked to ban Muslim clothing? They’d burn me as a Muslim hater,” Le Pen reportedly said, according to Haaretz. She added that she was “asking our Jewish compatriots to make this small effort, this little sacrifice probably” for the sake of equality.
“I’m sure a big part of them are ready to make that little sacrifice,” she said.
Le Pen’s anti-immigrant, anti-Islamist party, which was founded in the 1970s by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, long has supported a ban on Muslim headscarves, niqabs and burkas.
The National Front has established itself as France’s third-largest political party. In 2002, it advanced to the second round in the presidential elections, clinching 17 percent of the vote.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
