Le Pen refuses headscarf, nixes talks with Lebanon cleric

France’s far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen refuses to don a headscarf for a meeting with Lebanon’s top Sunni Muslim cleric and walks away from the scheduled appointment after a brief squabble at the entrance.

Le Pen, who is on a three-day visit to Lebanon this week and has met senior officials, was to meet with the country’s grand mufti, Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian.

Shortly after she arrives at his office, one of his aides hands her a white headscarf to put on. Following a discussion with his aides that last few minutes, she refuses and returns to her car.

Le Pen has tried to raise her international profile and press her pro-Christian stance with her visit to Lebanon, a former French protectorate.

After walking away from the meeting with the grand mufti, Le Pen says she had previously told the cleric’s office that she would not wear a headscarf.

“They didn’t cancel the meeting, so I thought they would accept the fact that I wouldn’t wear one,” she says. “They tried to impose it upon me.”

The office of Lebanon’s mufti issues a statement saying that Le Pen was told in advance through one of her aides that she would have to put on a headscarf during the meeting with the mufti.

“This is the protocol” at the mufti’s office, the statement says. It says the mufti’s aides tried to give her the headscarf and that Le Pen refused to take it.

“The mufti’s office regrets this inappropriate behavior in such meetings,” the statement says.

— AP