Macron’s party bans Muslim candidate for wearing hijab in poster

Sara Zemmahi was planning to run with LREM in local elections, but has been criticised by the far right and the LREM itself.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling centrist party has barred a Muslim candidate from running in a local election after she was photographed in a hijab for a campaign flyer, a move which has drawn criticism from experts and opened bitter divisions within the party. Macron’s La Republique en Marche (The Republic on the Move, LREM) said the party line was that in secular France, there should be no place for the overt display of religious symbols on electoral campaign documents. “This woman will not be an en Marche candidate,” Stanislas Guerini, the party’s general secretary, told RTL radio, referring to Sara Zemmahi.