The proposal is dominating the French political news cycle after a lawmaker from Le Pen’s National Rally said Sunday that wearing the hijab in public would become a fineable offense if she took office. Le Pen is currently polling with a double-digit lead ahead of the first round of the spring 2027 French presidential election.
Left-wing political leaders and civil liberties advocates in France lambasted Le Pen’s proposal as Islamophobic and discriminatory. The hijab is a headscarf worn by some Muslim women.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading leftist candidate for next year’s presidential election, according to the most recent polling, accused Le Pen of wanting to set up an “Iranian-style clothing police” in a post on X. SOS Racisme, a French anti-racism watchdog, said Le Pen was looking to “chase Muslim women out of public areas.”
Center-right candidate Edouard Philippe said the state should focus on combatting “Islamism and extremists, not French Muslims,” and conservative candidate Bruno Retailleau argued it would be a poor use of police resources.
Debate about the hijab, which is worn by 26 percent of French Muslim women aged 18 to 49 according to a 2023 report from the French national statistics agency, regularly comes up in France.
It is one of the few European countries to have entirely outlawed wearing full-face veils in public and was the only country to ban its own athletes from wearing the hijab during the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Religious head coverings, including hijabs and kippas, have been banned in schools since 2004.
