Marine Le Pen refuses to wear veil to meet with top Muslim cleric in Lebanon

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen canceled a meeting with Lebanon's grand mufti after she was asked to wear a headscarf.

Le Pen, who was on a two-day visit to Lebanon to boost her foreign policy credentials, was supposed to meet the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian on Tuesday morning, but she walked out after she was asked to wear a headscarf.

She said that she was surprised by the requirement, although the spokesman for the Grand Mufti has stated that she was informed of the need to wear a head covering for the meeting.

Le Pen pointed to her meeting with the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar in Egypt in 2015 and said that there was no requirement that time to cover her head, CNN reported.

"I met the grand mufti of Al-Azhar. The highest Sunni authority didn't have this requirement, but it doesn't matter," she told reporters. "You can pass on my respects to the grand mufti, but I will not cover myself up," she added.

Khaldoun Awas, a spokesman for Lebanon's grand mufti, told CNN that he greeted Le Pen at the door of the Edict House and tried to hand her a white headscarf but she refused to accept it.

"I urged her to put it on, she refused and said she would not put it on and walked out without attending the previously agreed upon meeting with the Mufti. The Edict House regrets such inappropriate behavior at such meetings," Awas recounted.

Le Pen had been vocal about her opposition to the headscarf, and she has previously expressed her intention to ban all religious symbols in public places.

Under French law, headscarves are prohibited for high school pupils and in public services, on account of church–state separation and equal rights for women. In 2011, France banned Muslim women from wearing the burqa and niqab in public areas.

Le Pen caught the ire of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt when she described Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as the "only viable solution" for preventing the Islamic State from taking over Syria.

Jumblatt said that Le Pen's comments were inappropriate and were considered as an insult to both Lebanese and Syrian people.

"I hope France will make a better choice than this fascist right. We cannot ask the Lebanese people to forget the crimes of the Syrian regime against it and we cannot return en masse (Syrians) while there is the Syrian regime. It's a double insult," he said after a meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Paris.