Le Pen’s gesture won’t help assuage sentiments

By refusing to put on a scarf for her meeting with the mufti, French leader has bolstered extremist views

Far-right French politician and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen made headlines globally on Tuesday when she refused to don the headscarf at a meeting with Lebanon’s Sunni Grand Mufti at his office. The incident may have caused embarrassment for the mufti, but it created a buzz in Europe and many cheers in radical nationalist circles in France and beyond.

The mufti’s representatives clarified that the politician had been informed about the dress code to meet the Islamic leader, but Le Pen appears to have decided to make the visit anyway, only to make a dramatic exit in front of dozens of cameras. By agreeing to meet a woman who has often been called an Islamophobe, the mufti inadvertently allowed himself to become a tool in France’s political game, being used by Le Pen and her far-right nationalist ilk to boost the candidate’s credentials at home for standing by her ostensibly secularist values and being steadfast in her confrontation of Islam.

The mufti, along with Lebanon’s other Muslim and Christian religious and political leaders who met Le Pen, have given legitimacy to a woman who has been shunned by governments, political parties, churches and other institutions across the world for her extremist views. Lebanon has helped bring this radical out of the fringe and into the mainstream.

Le Pen counts among her friends Dutch radical Islamophobe Geert Wilders, who recently called Moroccan migrants “scum” and wants to ban the Quran, as well as American site Breitbart News that has become a platform for America’s white supremacists, among her fans. Given the warm welcome she received in Beirut, Lebanon’s political and religious elite should not be alarmed to find themselves being lumped in the same camp.