Scarf stirs a flap in French politics

BEIRUT — French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen refused to don a head scarf for a meeting with Lebanon’s top Sunni Muslim cleric Tuesday and skipped the appointment after a brief squabble at the office entrance.

The awkward moment topped Le Pen’s three-day visit to Lebanon, where she held her first campaign meeting with a head of state. It drew the focus to her strong support for secularism and a proposal in her presidential platform that promotes banishing head scarves and other obvious religious symbols in all public spaces.

“I consider the head scarf a symbol of a woman’s submission,” Le Pen told reporters. “I will not put on the veil.”