MARINE LE PEN TAKES A DISMAYING TURN

The daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen has suddenly decided she doesn't want to distinguish herself clearly from her father: she wants to ban Jewish kippas in public:

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen called Friday for a ban on the wearing of Muslim veils and Jewish skullcaps in public, adding to religious tensions sparked by cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, AFP reports.

Speaking in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, Le Pen called for religious headwear to be banned "in stores, on public transport and on the streets."

Asked whether the ban should apply to the Jewish skullcap, known as the kippah or yarmulke, as well as Muslim headwear, Le Pen said, “It is obvious that if the veil is banned, the kippah is banned in public as well.”

Le Pen, who won almost 18 percent in the first round of this year's presidential vote, also repeated calls for bans on public prayers, kosher and halal foods in schools and foreign government financing of mosques in France.

I can't believe this, or can I? And here just when she'd given a pretty good argument about free speech issues, she goes along and ruins everything by spectacularly signaling she doesn't want to make any distinctions between Judaism and Islam, and probably not between Chabad and Satmar either.

Jean-Francois Cope, who leads the right-wing UMP party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, said Le Pen showed little understanding of France's much-vaunted secular traditions.

“Marine Le Pen wants to ban any signs of religion on the street, starting with the veil and the kippah,” AFP quoted him as having said. “By doing this, she shows she understands nothing of secularism. Secularism is not the eradication of all religious expressions in society.”

Richard Prasquier, who heads France's main Jewish council CRIF, told AFP the statement showed there were "secular fanatics just as there are religious fanatics.

"Obviously, I am hostile to both," he said.

And now Marine Le Pen has sadly decided to alienate potential allies in the Jewish community by shunning them based on religious symbols that have tragically made Jewish men - and women - targets of Islamofascists in the streets; it's not like they really can wear them at ease in public. So just what is her problem anyway? All she's doing is possibly making some people in the public feel devastated and potentially throwing away some of the support she could've gained legtimately.