Strange scene on Monday morning, October 25, in the first edition of “Face à la rue” presented by Jean-Marc Morandini on the CNews channel. The journalist accompanied Éric Zemmour to the residents of Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis). At the bend in the road, the essayist met a woman called Rachida and a discussion about wearing the veil ensued. Judged by Éric Zemmour as a religious sign, for her it is only “a small piece of cloth that makes her the woman [she is]”.
I decided to wear the veil,” she emphasises. I have only been wearing it for a short time because my heart and my faith led me to this veil,” she adds. Before admitting that she had no intention of taking it off because according to French values “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”, women must be respected. She asked the essayist to consider her “as a woman” and not with the garment she was wearing, stating that she was a “free woman”. In response, Éric Zemmour replied, “Take it off if you don’t mind.” Rachida asked him to take off his tie.
The probable future presidential candidate agreed and reminded her that “the tie is not a religious symbol”. His interlocutor’s reply: “Neither is the headscarf, it is faith, what we carry inside. Not so for the essayist, who calls wearing the veil a “commandment of religion”. Rachida finally took off the veil in question and asked him, “Cloth or no cloth, is it not respect that we seek? Is this freedom?” And to assure, “I have decided to take it off.”
After removing the veil, Rachida finally respects secularism, said Éric Zemmour. But this remark did not really please the main actor. “No, I respect myself […] the headscarf does not make the religion. Éric Zemmour took the view that there was “no individual freedom” in Islam and gave her to understand that she was contradicting herself. The video sequence broadcast on social networks has already provoked numerous criticisms from opponents of Éric Zemmour, but also from Muslims, who are visibly annoyed by the scene and in some cases do not hesitate to insult the woman: ” She doesn’t even have a guilty conscience to do that” or “She took off her veil just like that, that crazy woman”. Others questioned her faith: “It is impossible that she is a real veiled woman” or went even further: “I would rather die than take off my veil.
But it is reminiscent of what the essayist elaborated on Sunday October 24 in the RTL show “Grand Jury”. Éric Zemmour had spoken out against the wearing of religious symbols of any kind in public spaces: “I will not be the president of veiled women.”
