French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on Tuesday canceled a meeting with Lebanon’s grand mufti, Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian, after refusing orders to cover herself with a headscarf.
Ms. Le Pen, president of the far-right National Front party, told reporters she was surprised by the requirement to wear a headscarf, though a spokesman for the grand mufti, Lebanon’s top cleric for Sunni Muslims, said she was informed of the demand before the meeting.
“I personally greeted her at the door of the Edict House and wanted to hand her a white headscarf that was in my hand, she refused to take it,” spokesman Khaldoun Awas told CNN.
“I urged her to put it on, she refused and said she would not put it on and walked out without attending the previously agreed upon meeting with the Mufti,” he said. “The Edict House regrets such inappropriate behavior at such meetings.”
Ms. Le Pen, who is on a three-day tour of Lebanon to court Franco-Lebanese voters ahead of the French elections, has been outspoken critic of religious coverings in public. She said she had informed the mufti’s aides the night before that she would not wear the headscarf but they didn’t cancel the meeting.
Instead, “they tried to impose it upon me,” she told The Associated Press. The officials at the mufti’s office “kept the meeting and consequently put me before a fait accompli,” she said.
“I stuck to my position, because when I take a position it corresponds to a conviction. If [you don’t like it] never mind,” she said.
Ms. Le Pen said she met with the grand mufti of Al-Azhar without covering her head during a 2015 trip to Egypt without issue.
“I met the grand mufti of Al-Azhar,” she said, CNN reported. “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,” she said.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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