PARIS — A Muslim lady in a blue and white hijab confronted Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, as she made her manner via a crowd within the southern city of Pertuis final week. “What’s the head scarf doing in politics?” the lady demanded.

Ms. Le Pen, a nationalist with an anti-immigrant agenda, has vowed to ban the carrying of the pinnacle scarf in public if she is elected within the second spherical of voting subsequent Sunday. She says that it’s “an Islamist uniform,” or an indication of adherence to an extremist, anti-Western interpretation of the Muslim religion.

The lady who argued with Ms. Le Pen was having none of this. Her option to put on a head scarf was made, she mentioned, “once I was an older lady,” as an indication of “being a grandmother.” Ms. Le Pen insisted that in lots of French neighborhoods girls who don’t put on a veil are “separated, remoted and judged.”

Within the nation with the most important Muslim inhabitants in western Europe, what a lady wears on her head issues. France has a troubled relationship with Islam due to its colonial historical past in Algeria and a number of other jihadist terror assaults in recent times. As Ms. Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron confront one another in a decent race, spiritual freedom, significantly for the Muslims who make up about 8 % of the inhabitants, has emerged as a pivotal situation.

Mr. Macron, who has referred to as Ms. Le Pen’s plan “an extremist venture,” has nonetheless angered some members of the Muslim neighborhood, primarily via laws designed to fight what he calls “Islamist separatism.” That legislation, handed final 12 months, has been used to shut some mosques and Islamic associations accused of fostering radicalism. It was designed partially to attract right-wing voters to his centrist camp.

Mr. Macron, whose lead in polls has widened barely over the previous week to 53.5 % in opposition to Ms. Le Pen’s 46.5 %, had his personal confrontation with a younger French lady carrying a hijab throughout a marketing campaign cease in Strasbourg final week.

“Are you a feminist?” he requested. “Are you for the equality of ladies and men?”

When the lady answered sure to each questions, and mentioned her head scarf was chosen, not imposed, Mr. Macron, clearly alluding to Ms. Le Pen, mentioned this was “the very best reply to all of the stupidity I maintain listening to.”

It was one other instance of Mr. Macron, who scarcely campaigned earlier than the primary spherical of voting on April 10, adjusting his message to enchantment to blocs of voters who’ve felt betrayed by him over the previous 5 years — the Muslim neighborhood and the left.

Within the first spherical, about 70 % of French Muslims voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who was narrowly eradicated, in keeping with a research by the Ifop polling institute. The place these votes now go issues.

France is a secular republic and in principle a nondiscriminatory society the place individuals are free to consider, or not, in any god they want. Nevertheless it finds itself in a fracturing debate over Islam. A rising Muslim presence is seen by the extreme-right as a mortal menace to French identification, and this view has gained a foothold within the political mainstream.

Intensely connected to its mannequin of a secular society, generally known as laïcité, which is meant to subsume all women and men into the rights and obligations of French citizenship, France has been reluctant to acknowledge failures which have left many Muslim immigrants and their descendants in dismal housing tasks on the periphery of massive cities, feeling no viable French identification or future.

Since 2011 it has been unlawful to put on a face-covering niqab, or a burqa masking your complete physique, in public. However there isn’t any ban on the pinnacle scarf.

French legal guidelines prohibit carrying ostentatious spiritual symbols — the pinnacle scarf is taken into account one — in colleges. Civil servants are additionally barred from doing so on the job. Debate has raged over whether or not dad and mom accompanying college journeys needs to be allowed to put on head scarves, however makes an attempt to cease them have failed.

Strongly held French emotions in regards to the equality of women and men, about secularism, and about its supposedly colorblind society lie behind the virulence of the dialogue of those points. So does unacknowledged or overt prejudice.

Mr. Macron has accused Ms. Le Pen of undermining the rules of laïcité and the Structure itself with the proposed head scarf ban. In an interview with Franceinfo radio final week, he mentioned she would additionally need to ban the usage of the “kippa, the cross and different spiritual symbols” in public or she can be discriminating amongst believers.

Not so, Ms. Le Pen retorted in an interview with France Inter radio. “The pinnacle scarf is in actuality an Islamist uniform, it’s not a Muslim uniform, and that makes all of the distinction. It’s the uniform of an ideology, not of a faith.”

She continued: “This ban just isn’t based mostly on the idea of laïcité. It’s based mostly on the battle in opposition to Islamist ideologies.”

Nonetheless, Ms. Le Pen appeared to hedge somewhat on Sunday, saying that the problem is a “advanced drawback” and that her proposed ban can be debated within the Nationwide Meeting.

Whether or not the ban would additionally apply to girls selecting head scarves as vogue statements à la Audrey Hepburn is unclear.

Ms. Le Pen has mentioned there can be no extra problem in making use of the ban, and fining girls who put on head scarves, than there may be implementing the usage of seatbelts.

If such feedback drive Muslim voters away from Ms. Le Pen, it’s removed from clear that they will even drive them to assist Mr. Macron within the second spherical. Many first-round voters for Mr. Mélenchon, Muslims amongst them, have mentioned they may abstain on April 24.

In a radio debate final week with Mr. Macron, Sara El Attar, the founding father of Hashtag Ambition and a communication coach, mentioned feedback by Mr. Macron suggesting head scarves injury relations between women and men had angered her as a Muslim lady who chooses to put on a head scarf.

French girls “have been punished in recent times for a easy scarf, with none chief deigning to denounce this injustice,” she mentioned.

Additional envenoming the talk on spiritual freedom, Ms. Le Pen has promised to ban the ritual slaughter of animals required for the manufacturing of halal and kosher meat, a place rejected by Mr. Macron as heralding a France the place “Muslims and Jews can be unable to eat as their faith instructs.”

In a joint assertion final week, Haïm Korsia, the chief rabbi of France, and Élie Korchia, the president of the Israelite Central Consistory, mentioned such a measure would, for Jews and Muslims alike, be “a severe assault on the free observe of faith that may be a basis of our Structure.” They urged voters to again Mr. Macron.

Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the Union of French Mosques, mentioned ritual slaughter was “a facet of the spiritual freedom” assured by the Structure. Whereas condemning Ms. Le Pen, he didn’t say which manner Muslims ought to vote.

The lady who confronted Ms. Le Pen in Pertuis famous that her father had served within the French army for 15 years. The big cemetery at Verdun, scene of some of the devastating battles of World Battle I, has a whole part for French Muslims who died combating for France.

As the talk over Islam’s place in France rages, this army service is seldom recalled, to the purpose that the place of Éric Zemmour — the now-eliminated hard-right candidate who held that Islam and France had been merely “incompatible” — drew nearly 2.5 million votes within the first spherical.

He has urged his followers to vote for Ms. Le Pen within the second spherical.

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.