When the Headscarf Transforms From a Rag of Secularism Into a French Renaissance!
(Translated)

News:

European MP Mathieu Vallet published a photo on platform X showing French far-right leader Marine Le Pen smiling with a Christian nun wearing a traditional head covering during Pope Leo XIV's historic visit to France. He captioned the image with the phrase, “The beautiful renaissance of France.” (Al-Arabiya, 1 October 2026).

Comment:

Only a few weeks separate this image from statements by Marine Le Pen, the National Rally's potential candidate in the upcoming French presidential election, who has vowed to ban the hijab for Muslim women in public spaces and impose financial fines if she reaches the Élysée Palace. In fact, their anti-Islam obsession has reached the point of using artificial intelligence to remove the hijab from a picture of a veiled woman and displaying it on a social media platform under the slogan “French Liberty.”

This very slogan classifies the hijab of Muslim women as a threat that undermines the values of the secular French Republic, while glorifying the head covering of nuns and considering it a source of French pride and renaissance! Le Pen is the same person who described Muslims praying in the street in 2010 as an “occupation without tanks or soldiers.” Therefore, the problem lies in the manifestation of any Islamic symbol or ritual in a state that claims to respect the law and to embrace all cultures without discrimination.

We must realize that every state emerges from a certain ideology, and capitalist France itself is not neutral and does not accept the existence of ideas based on a different ideology. If it were to accept them, it would open itself to a war against an ideology from which a comprehensive system of life emerges—one not limited to acts of worship alone, but encompassing social, economic, political, educational, legislative, and administrative systems. In other words, it would be accepting a civilizational alternative that threatens its very existence, an existence already reeling in the throes of decay and death.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dorrah Al-Bakush