At the 2023 Women’s World Cup, Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina was celebrated around the world when she became the first woman to play in a FIFA World Cup while wearing a hijab.
But when the Olympics begin this week, France will ban its athletes from wearing headscarves during the Games, which Amnesty International says exposes “discriminatory double standards ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic Games” and “makes a mockery of claims that Paris 2024 is the first gender-equal Olympics”.
According to Anna Blus, Amnesty International’s women’s rights researcher in Europe, it “lays bare the racist gender discrimination that underpins access to sport in France”.
Shireen Ahmed, activist and senior contributor at CBC Sports in Canada, says the ban is a “deliberate exclusion of racialised women who are mostly brown and black” and wear the hijab.
“There’s this juxtaposition of people saying, ‘no, hijab is oppressive’ or ‘they don’t have a choice’, when these women have literally chosen to do this. It takes away the bodily agency. It takes away choice,” adds Ahmed.
“Forcing women out of clothing is as violent as forcing them into it. Part of the Olympic Charter says that athletes should not be discriminated against according to race, religion, culture, political affiliation, and that’s exactly what’s happening.”
In 2023, Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina became the first woman to play in a FIFA World Cup while wearing a hijab
Athletes prohibited from wearing outwardly religious symbols
The IOC says France consider their athletes to be “civil servants” who must “respect the principles of secularism and neutrality, which, according to French law, means prohibition from wearing outwardly religious symbols, including the hijab, veil and headscarf when they are acting in their official capacity and on official occasions as members of the French national team”.
When asked for a statement on the issue, the IOC told Sky Sports News: “Athletes will be free to wear the hijab so long as it is compatible with their sport and within the rules set by the relevant International Federation (IF).
“As this is a matter for IFs, the IOC does not have anything else to add on this matter.”
The French National and Olympic Sports Committee (CNOSF) has been approached for comment.
Human rights group Amnesty International said: “France is in breach of multiple obligations under international human rights treaties as well as commitments and values set out in the International Olympic Committee’s own human rights framework.”
Ahmed believes the concept of secularism is “fine, if applied evenly”.
“The problem is that it’s not applied evenly,” Ahmed says, using the example of football players with tattoos of Christ, wearing crucifixes or when they cross themselves before going onto a football pitch.
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French secularism
In January 2022, the French senate voted 160 to 143 to ban the wearing of the hijab and other “ostensible religious symbols” in sports competitions following a proposed amendment from Les Republicains, a right-wing party who argued that headscarves can risk the safety of athletes wearing them, despite multiple large sports clothing brands creating sport-specific hijabs.
In June 2023, the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, said the French Football Federation was entitled to ban the hijab.
It all dates back to 1905 when a law on the separation of church and state was established as a principle of the French Republic. Laicite, France’s own brand of secularism, or religious neutrality, was written into the French constitution.
Seventy-four per cent of the French population have expressed a strong attachment to laicite, with 78 per cent saying it is part of France’s national identity.
With the rise of the far-right in France, activists and human rights groups believe the hijab ban is just one example of the increase in xenophobia and Islamophobia in France.
Only four per cent of the French population are Muslim, but France has also banned burqas and niqabs from streets, public transport and shops and the hijab is allowed in public spaces and universities but not in public schools.
French historian and sociologist Jean Bauberot, the founder of the sociology of secularism, has written about a general sense of Islamophobia in France since terrorist attacks by religious extremists over the past decade.
“We talk about laicite because it’s more noble, but it’s the fear of Islam and terrorism behind the calls for a hijab ban,” writes Bauberot.
Amnesty International: Bans have resulted in girls dropping out of sport
Benzina in action for Morocco during the 2023 Football World Cup
When Benzina became the first hijab-wearing woman to play in a FIFA World Cup in 2023, it was celebrated globally. But less than 10 years before, there was a FIFA ban on playing in religious head coverings for “health and safety reasons”, which was only overturned in 2014.
Basketball’s international governing body FIBA, lifted its hijab ban in 2017, with the CEO of USA Basketball Jim Tooley saying it was “a good step for FIBA to put this issue behind it”.
But seven years later, the French Basketball Federation says one reason for upholding its ban is to “promote equality”.
Amnesty International says France’s exclusionary bans cause “humiliation, trauma and fear and have resulted in many women and girls dropping out of sports they love or even seeking opportunities in other countries”.
“Preventing Muslim women and girls from fully and freely participating in sports, for leisure and recreation or as a career, can have devastating impacts on all aspects of their lives, including on their mental and physical health.”
Lina Boussaha, 25, was born and raised in Paris and is a former France youth international. She grew up playing for the PSG academy and made four appearances for the senior team before moving to Lille on a season-long loan deal in 2018.
In 2022, she moved to Saudi Arabia to play in the Saudi Women’s Premier League, not knowing much about the league or the country, but knowing she had the opportunity to continue playing the sport she loved while still being able to wear her hijab.
“I knew that the only solutions to continue my sport were either to remove my hijab during games or to leave my country. For me, the choice was easy,” she told Sky Sports.
“The ban is affecting young French girls and women who want to play sports both mentally and physically.”
Basketballer Diaba Konate was born and raised in Paris but went to the US on a full scholarship at Idaho State University to play basketball, telling The Guardian: “I love my home country, but I feel like America loves me more.” Konate has dreams of playing basketball for France, something she cannot think of because of the French hijab ban.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” says Ahmed. “There is a lack of participation because of bans. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? We have missed out on generations of footballers from 2007 to 2014 [during the FIFA ban on religious headwear] and then after that, particularly in France.
“The sad part of it is you can’t help what sport you fall in love with. There is a growing amount of anti-Muslim misogynistic activism in policies that is really trying to isolate Muslim women from wider society. Sport is a part of a wider society.”