AAfter months of campaigning by sports organizations, France has not reversed its decision to ban French athletes who observe the hijab from participating in the Summer Olympics; a move that human rights organizations say is, at best, a contradiction to the nation’s commitment to fulfilling the first games with gender equalityand, at worst, a violation of international human rights treaties.
“This shows Muslim women that when French authorities talk about equality between men and women, they do not see them as women. They don’t count them,” says Anna Błuś, Amnesty International’s researcher on women’s rights in Europe. “It’s really important that mainstream human rights organizations like ours are very strong on this issue and publicly demonstrate solidarity with Muslim women’s rights groups,” says Błuś. “These communities and these women have been demonized and vilified for years.”
On Tuesday, Amnesty International published a report appealing to French authorities for the “discriminatory hypocrisy” of banning the hijab in several sports, including football, volleyball and basketball. Amnesty’s report details the racial and gender discrimination and barriers to entry that French Muslim athletes currently face at professional and amateur levels. It also addresses the IOC’s refusal to put pressure on authorities to lift the ban, which does not apply to non-French participants in the Olympic Games.
In September, French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera stated that a ban would be in force for the Olympic Games, despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) not having a uniform rule against wearing a headscarf. The stipulation is part of a growing number of secularist policies in France that disproportionately affect Muslim girls and women, according to Błuś, including the 2004 ban of “ostentatious religious symbols” in public schools that saw the hijab banned, followed by a 2023 Decision prohibit students from wearing the abaya, a modest robe.
In a statement sent to TIME, the IOC said that although its own rules mean that women are free to observe the hijab, athletes competing for French national teams are considered public servants who must act in accordance with national contexts. “This means that they must respect the principles of secularism (laïcité) and neutrality, which, according to French law, means the prohibition of using outwardly religious symbols, including the hijab, veil and headscarf, when acting in their official capacity and official functions. occasions as members of the French national team,” the statement said. Athletes – including from France – are allowed to wear hijabs in athletes’ villages.
According to the IOC statement, a French athlete who observes the hijab has qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games, but claims that the situation “has been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
A spokesperson for the French Ministry of Sports says that although an athlete “will never be banned from a competition due to their religious beliefs”, its secularist rules act as a “framework” for the use of religious symbols, which it considers to be the hijab. “There is no general ban on wearing the veil on sports fields in France. The law, clarified by administrative jurisprudence, describes two specific cases”, adds the statement, outlining prohibitions on political and religious symbols for athletes from French national teams and engaged amateur practice.
How does France’s hijab ban affect Muslim athletes?
Regulations against religious symbols are not exclusive to the Olympics and have been prevalent in French sports, both recreationally and professionally. One of these bans from the French Basketball Federation (FFBB), called Article 9.3, came into force in December 2022 and prohibits the use of “any equipment with religious or political connotations”.
Among those campaigning for regulatory reform is Hélène Bâ, a 22-year-old basketball player who has played the sport since she was five years old. Bâ took a break from basketball for four years while studying international law at university, before looking to return to professional play in 2022. It was then that she learned that the French Basketball Federation banned accessories that covered the head.
“It was a real shock for me because we know what that means in the French context, it means you can’t play as a hijabi player,” Bâ, who will not play in the Olympics this summer, told TIME. “I went to my game in another city and the referee told my coach that I couldn’t play in my sports hijab,” says Bâ, noting that her coach told her the referee wanted her to remove it, along with the long sleeve. -shirt. Bâ said the referee said her outfit was “dangerous” and banned her from playing unless she took it off. She remained on the bench throughout the game, unwilling to sacrifice her beliefs to participate.
“When you can’t play, it first affects your mental health, especially when sport and basketball have been such an important part of your life,” says Bâ. “It’s also difficult because from a physical health point of view you don’t play sports anymore.”
Bâ is not alone in this experience. Diaba Konaté, 24, was a young basketball talent in her prime when she reached the final of the U18 European Championship and Youth Olympic Games in 2018. (She won’t play in the Olympics this summer.) She won a full scholarship to play at UC Irvine, in the USA. But the prospect of playing for France became illusory again with the ban on the hijab. Konaté told Al Jazeera She started wearing the hijab two years ago and was “humiliated” when she was told she couldn’t take part in French tournaments unless she took it off.
Basket Pour Toutes (basketball for everyone)
Konaté found community in Toute basket (Basketball For All), a group co-founded by Bâ, alongside coach Timothée Gauthierot and sociologist Haifa Tlili. The collective was created in October 2023 in an attempt to fight discrimination in basketball and provide a sense of community for young Hijab-observant girls who love the sport. It is made up of players, coaches and human rights defenders who come together to fight for change and organize events.
Basket Pour Toutes and the Sports and Rights Alliance wrote a letter to the IOC in May, which was published in June, calling on the body to pressure France to annul its discriminatory ban. “Our message is that we just want to play sports. Muslim women who wear the hijab have rights like any other citizen,” says Bâ.
Bâ says the young Muslim women they engage with deserve to see members of their community performing at the highest level in their sport, including at the Olympic Games. “If they see French players in hijabi, they’ll say ‘okay, I could be that girl, I could be that player, I could be that athlete,’” she says. Without that, and without a clear path to playing sport on her terms, she fears that Muslim girls will get the message that sport is not for them.
Tlili says he has observed many French Muslims who want to expatriate and play abroad, adding that some French Muslim players feel they are being forced to choose between their identity and their sport. “That’s not what they want,” says Tlili. “They really want to practice in France because all their family and friends are there and they are proud to be French.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
