France’s Muslims face ‘lesser-evil’ choice between Macron, Le Pen

A report published on the New York Times on Saturday showed that France’s minority Muslim population – an estimated six million people that account for 10 percent of the whole population of the European country – in fact will choose between lesser of the two evils – Macron and Le Pen – in a second-round runoff vote on Sunday.

Macron’s government is under fire for systematically targeting the country’s minority Muslim population with anti-Muslim policies through introducing a series of controversial laws that several human rights groups have censured as Islamophobic – including the anti-separatism law and the Imam Charter.

Since August last year, the authorities, according to the government, carried out 24,877 investigations through January. They also closed 718 mosques, Muslim schools and associations for encouraging separatism, seizing assets worth 46 million euros.

Furthermore, the Observatory of Associative Liberties, an umbrella group of academics and rights groups, revealed after an investigation of 20 cases that many establishments have been shut down for vague and unwarranted reasons.

Le Pen, on the other hand, has repeatedly underscored that stopping what she brands “uncontrolled immigration” and “eradicating Islamist ideologies” are her manifesto’s two priorities. She even said she would ban hijab in public, although she softened her tone in recent days, apparently in favor of securing more votes from Muslims.

Last week, Le Pen said that the issue of hijab was a “complex problem” that the National Assembly would have to debate and that she was not “close-minded.” Her top aides eventually said that banning the wearing of the hijab was not a priority.

“If I vote for Macron, I’d be participating in all the bad things he’s done against Muslims,” said Mr. Bouadla, 50.

According to the report, he was vacillating between abstaining for the first time in his life or reluctantly casting a ballot for Macron simply to fend off someone – Le Pen - he considered “worse and more dangerous.”

Macron and Le Pen are now amid a fight for securing over the 7.7 million voters who supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader who earned a strong third-place finish in the first round.

Since 70 percent of Muslims voted for Mélenchon, who denounced discrimination against Muslims, Macron and Le Pen attempt to focus on the country’s minority Muslim population for garnering as many votes as possible.

According to Ifop, Macron secured only 14 percent of Muslim voters’ support this year, compared with 24 percent in 2017. Le Pen, for her part, got 7 percent in the first round this year. Nationwide, according to Ifop, the turnout of Muslim voters was a couple of percentage points higher than the average.

Some Muslims even voted for Le Pen as a way to punish Macron over his controversial laws against Muslims.

“I vote against Macron. I’m Muslim, an Arab, but French. Marine Le Pen can’t tell me to go back home. She can’t do anything against me,” said Ahmed Leyou, 63, a taxi driver, who voted for Le Pen in the first round and planned to do it again on Sunday.

The 2022 presidential election in France is unlike any of the previous ones, mainly due to the events that have taken place on the political and social arena in recent years such as an economic crisis, the COVID pandemic, the Ukraine conflict, and the increasing pressure on minorities, such as Muslims and immigrants.