Since one week, both candidates have staged their many disputes on the issues of the veil, ritual slaughter and, more broadly, their conception of secularism.
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The fight against Islamism and the defense of animal welfare on one side, secularism and religious freedom of the other. And, in the middle, the Marine Le Pen project to prohibit purely and simply the port of the Muslim veil outside their homes and the mosque as well as the ritual slaughter, without prior stunning, livestock, to offer Halal and kosher meats.
Since one week, the two qualified candidates in the second round of the presidential election have staged, at a distance, their opposition on these subjects, who will not fail to be present during the televised face-to-face that will oppose on Wednesday, April 20th.
Recurring debates for more than fifteen years on the goers of school trips or veiled students suddenly appear far. With the veil, the far-right candidate asserts that it does not prohibit a religious sign, but “an Islamist uniform”. In case of offense, a woman covered with such a “Islamist” scarf on the street or a place open to the public would be verbalized and liable to a fine. Asked about the feasibility of such repression, the national gathering candidate (RN) establishes a parallel with the control of the obligation of the port of the seatbelt, that “the police arrives very well to enforce”. “For the port of the mask, it was done for 65 million French”, argues the deputy director of his campaign, Jean-Philippe Tanguy. “I take the bet that when the law will change, everyone will submit it to the law,” Marine Le Pen, Tuesday, April 12, on France Inter.
The far-right candidate has formalized his intention in a bill filed in February 2021. In reality, the prohibition is wider than the only veil, of which some Muslims cover his head, since article 10 of this document plans to prohibit “in the public space the signs or held constituting by themselves an unequivocal and ostentatious affirmation of ideologies [Islamists]”. Could some barbs be considered as Islamists too? Mr. Tanguy does not exclude him, some of the ideology “defining the Islamist beard in a very precise way”, according to him.
“An Islamist uniform” not “Muslim”
Emmanuel Macron denounced, Friday, April 15, on Franceinfo, “an extreme project” which would make France “the first country in the world that prohibits the veil in the public space”. He criticizes such a prohibition on the field of religious freedom. “Prohibiting any religious sign in the public space, it is not secularism,” said the president candidate in a brut-out media interview on the 8th of April. According to him, if this project was implemented, the Constitution would make obligation to M me Le Pen also to prohibit the street “La Kippa, the Cross, the other religious signs” not to establish discrimination between believers.
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