Paris 2024: The controversial hijab ban at sport’s biggest party

Located next to the Seine River, Cite du Cinema is famous for its film industry.

However, by July, the cavernous studio spaces will be redesigned to become the heart of the Athletes’ Village for the Paris Olympics.

Athletes from all countries and cultures will be found in the dining hall, sitting across from each other and sharing meals and stories. It is a multicultural melting pot, where people of different beliefs and colors meet every four years.

However, the dress code for hosts is different from that of their guests.

In September, the International Olympic Committee made clear that athletes in Paris could represent themselves and their religion, as well as their country.

An IOC spokesperson told Reuters: “For the Olympic Village, IOC rules apply.”

“There are no restrictions on wearing the hijab or any other religious or cultural dress.”

But the French team was told something different.

“Banning the hijab [a type of headscarf that covers the head and neck, but leaves the face clear] “Discrimination is the result of two types of discrimination: it is Islamophobia, but also sexism,” says Veronica Noceda, who plays soccer for Les Degommeuses, a Parisian soccer club founded to combat discrimination.

Aseel Tufaili, who moved to Lyon in 2021 after playing football at international level with her native Lebanon, agrees.

“It’s not about French society, it’s about the government,” she says.

He added: “There has been hatred towards Muslims over the past few years in France, and this appears in sports.”

This summer and the arrival of the Olympics in Paris will be the clearest sporting evidence of the distinctive and divisive French concept.

The liberty, equality, and fraternity that first emerged during the French Revolution are perhaps the most famous expression of what France aspires to. It appears on the front of the Constitution, on coins and stamps, and on public buildings.

Less well-known, and more difficult to translate, is another key principle of the French Republic: secularism.

Laïcité, which is often translated as secularism in English, does not require that French people abandon any religious customs or symbols, but instead that the state and public institutions must be explicitly free of them.

It is a hotly contested idea in France, especially in the wake of a range of terrorist attacks over the past decade and a parallel resurgence of far-right politics.

French President Emmanuel Macron has found himself defining this term repeatedly.

“The problem is not secularism,” he said in an October 2020 speech.

“Secularism in the French Republic means freedom to believe or not to believe, and the possibility of practicing one’s religion as long as law and order are guaranteed.

“Secularism means the neutrality of the state. It does not in any way mean the removal of religion from society and the public arena. A united France is strengthened by secularism.”

A 2004 law attempted to add some clarity to the concept, banning “ostentatious” religious symbols in public schools, without citing specific examples.

While Sikh turbans, Jewish kippahs and large Christian crosses have been interpreted as falling on the wrong side of secularism, most of the debate has centered around head coverings among the largest Muslim population of any country in Western Europe.

In September, French Sports Minister Amelie O’Dea Castera – a former professional tennis player who lost to Martina Hingis in the 1994 Wimbledon junior semi-finals – asserted that the French Olympic team, as an institution that represents and finances the French public, was obligated to secularism.

“This means absolute neutrality in public services,” she said. “The French national team will not wear the hijab.”

Athletes from other countries will be free to wear religious symbols in the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Village as they wish. But members of the French team, if they wanted to abide by their country’s rules, could not.

Some international bodies have criticized this position.

Human rights charity Amnesty International added that “the ban on wearing the religious hijab in public places violates the rights of Muslim women.”

But in France, the ban has broad support.

“It’s a very complex and sensitive issue,” says Sebastien Millard, an associate fellow at think tank Chatham House, who has written about French politics and society for most of his career.

“When I moved from Paris to London, that was one of the main differences. In the UK religion is presented very comfortably, whereas in Paris it is often seen as something more provocative.”

Millard points to another, smaller controversy regarding the exclusion of religious symbols in Paris 2024.

In March, the game’s official poster was unveiled, a simplified image of Paris’s landmarks clustered to form the stadium.

He overlooked the artist Golden cross This sparked debate about the extent to which the Games – which will cost French taxpayers several billion euros – adhere to the principles of secularism.

“The debate today often centers around the Muslim community, a community that wants to be a full part of French society but also follows the religion in its own way,” Millard says. “We’ve had this discussion over and over again about how proportionate this is.

“The French Republic was founded in part on the rejection of Catholicism, and feels threatened when touched by religion. There is a strong fear, especially among older generations, of the influence of religion on society and the state.”

This discussion takes place in areas where these demographic differences are most pronounced – in education, but also in sports.

During Ramadan last year – a month-long fast between sunrise and sunset by Muslims – the French Football Federation (FFF) sent a decision to referees not to pause matches to allow players to break their fast, saying such interruptions “don’t do that”. The provisions of the Federation’s statute are not respected.”

This year, with Ramadan coinciding with the international break, the French Football Federation confirmed that it would not change the timing of meals and practices to accommodate Muslim players, effectively preventing them from fasting while in camp with France’s age group and senior teams.

Another talented player in another sport, basketball player Diaba Konate, who represented France at under-23 level, has left for the United States, saying the ban on her wearing the hijab had left her. “Heart broken”.

Even in low-level domestic matches, female Muslim players are usually prohibited from wearing the hijab, on the grounds that the leagues are organized and managed by public bodies. Protection caps – an alternative solution attempted by some players – were also deemed inconsistent with the rules by some referees.

The application of secularism to the grassroots of sport means that athletes who wear the hijab often give up or leave the sport before reaching the biggest stage.

But this summer will define their dilemma in starkest terms: the choice between wearing the national team kit at Paris 2024 and expressing personal faith.

Elsewhere in the sport, expectations have changed.

Moroccan defender Nahila Benzina made history at the Women’s World Cup last summer.

After FIFA changed rules in 2014 to allow the wearing of head coverings for religious reasons, she became the first person to wear a hijab at a World Cup when she took to the field against South Korea.

In Rio 2016, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad made headlines when she became the first American to participate in the Olympic Games wearing a hijab. She later became one of the athletes to launch a hijab made specifically for sports by a global American sports brand.

Another athlete who won a medal at those games while wearing a head covering, Iranian taekwondo athlete Kimia Alizadeh, has since emigrated to Germany, where she has criticized the Iranian government’s “compulsory hijab” policy.

She competed in the 2021 Tokyo Games under the Refugee Team flag and without a religious head covering.

Iqra Ismail can only speak for herself, from a perspective across the Channel in the UK, where secularism is a foreign concept.

She is a director of Hilltop FC, a Refugee Football Project Coordinator at QPR Community Trust, and a Muslim who has loved sport since she was a child.

“Wearing the hijab is part of my identity,” she says. “When it comes to playing, it’s not something I’ll leave outside the field.”

“Football is a human right, and everyone should certainly have the right to participate in it.”

Yasmine Abubakar is the founder of Sisterhood FC, a Muslim women’s football club in London.

“I used to ask Muslim girls why they stopped playing football, and the answers they gave me were very sad,” says Abu Bakr of the inspiration behind the club.

“Half of them stopped because they felt they didn’t belong. The other half felt they couldn’t access football in a way that met their religious requirements.

“I don’t know how I will feel as a young Muslim when the government tells me that I cannot have the freedom to practice my religion.

“I am very grateful that my parents did not immigrate to France.”