Why France Is Banning the Hijab for Their Olympic Athletes

After months of campaigning by sporting 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 of the nation’s pledge to deliver the first gender-equal games, and at worst, a breach of international human rights treaties.

“It shows Muslim women that when the French authorities talk about equality between men and women, they don't see them as women. They don't count them,” says Anna Błuś, Amnesty International’s women’s rights researcher in Europe. “It's really important for major human rights organizations such as ours, to be very vocal on this issue, and to publicly show solidarity with Muslim women's rights groups,” Błuś says. “These communities and these women have been demonized and vilified for years.” 

On Tuesday, Amnesty International published a report calling out French authorities for the “discriminatory hypocrisy” of its hijab bans across a number of sports including soccer, volleyball, and basketball. Amnesty’s report details the racial and gendered discrimination and barriers to entry that French Muslim athletes currently face at professional and amateur level. It also addresses the IOC’s refusal to apply pressure on authorities to overturn the ban, which does not apply to non-French participants at the Olympics. 

In September, French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera stated that a ban would be in effect for the Olympics, despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) having no uniform rule against wearing a headscarf. The stipulation is one of a growing number of secularist policies in France that disproportionately affect Muslim girls and women, according to Błuś, including the 2004 banning of “ostentatious religious symbols” in state-run schools that saw the hijab banned, followed by a 2023 decision to ban students from wearing the abaya, a modest robe. 

In a statement sent to TIME, the IOC said that while its own rules mean that women are free to observe the hijab, athletes competing for French national teams are considered to be civil 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 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,” the statement said. Athletes—including from France—are permitted to wear hijabs in athletes' villages.

According to the IOC’s statement, one French athlete who observes hijab qualified for the 2024 Olympic games but it says the situation “has been resolved to the satisfaction of everyone.”

A spokesperson for the French Sports Ministry says that while an athlete “will never be banned from a competition because of their religious beliefs,” its secularism rules act as a “framework” for wearing religious symbols, which it has deemed the hijab to be. “There is no general ban on wearing the veil in sports fields in France. The law, clarified by administrative jurisprudence, outlines two specific cases,” the statement adds, outlining bans on political and religious symbols for athletes on the French national teams and engaged amateur practice.

How does France’s hijab ban impact Muslim athletes?

Regulations against religious symbols are not exclusive to the Olympics, and have been prevalent in French sports at both recreational and professional levels. One such ban by the French Basketball Federation (FFBB), dubbed Article 9.3, came into effect in December 2022, and forbids the wearing of “any equipment with a religious or political connotation.” 

Among those campaigning for regulation reform are Hélène Bâ, a 22-year-old basketball player who has been participating in the sport since she was five years old. Bâ took a break from basketball for four years while she studied international law at university, before trying to return to professional games in 2022. It was then that she learned that the French Federation of Basketball prohibited accessories that cover the head. 

“It was a real shock to me, because we know what this means in the French context, it means that you can’t play as a hijabi player,” Bâ, who is not playing in the Olympics this summer, tells TIME. “I went to my game in another town and the referee told my coach that I couldn't play with my sports hijab,” Bâ says, noting that her coach told her the referee wanted her to remove it, along with her long sleeve t-shirt. Bâ said that the referee said her attire was “dangerous” and forbade her from playing unless she removed it. She stayed on the bench for the duration of the game, unwilling to sacrifice her beliefs to participate. 

“When you cannot play, it first impacts your mental health, especially when sport and basketball has been such a huge part of your life,” Bâ says. “It's also difficult because from a physical health point of view, you are not playing sports anymore.” 

Bâ is not alone in this experience. Diaba Konaté, 24, was a young basketball talent at the top of her game when she both reached the finals of the U18 European Championship and the Youth Olympic Games in 2018. (She is not playing in the Olympics this summer.) She earned a full scholarship to play with UC Irvine in the U.S. But the prospect of playing for France again became elusive with the hijab ban. Konaté told Al Jazeera she began wearing the hijab two years ago and was “humiliated” when she was told she could not participate in French tournaments unless she removed it. 

Basket Pour Toutes (Basketball For All)

Konaté found community in Basket Pour Toutes (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 a bid to fight back against discrimination in basketball and provide a sense of community to young Hijab-observing girls who love the sport. It consists of players, coaches, and human rights defenders coming together to rally for change and to organize events.

Basket Pour Toutes and the Sport & Rights Alliance wrote a letter to the IOC in May, which was published in June, calling on the body to pressure France into overturning 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 that the young Muslim girls they engage with deserve to see members of their community performing at the highest level in their sport, including at the Olympics. ”If they see French hijabi players they will say ‘okay, I could be that girl, I can be that player, I can be that athlete,” she says. Without this, and without a clear pathway to play sport on their terms, she fears that Muslim girls are sent the message that sport is not for them. 

Tlili says she has observed a lot of French Muslims who want to expatriate and play abroad, adding that some French Muslim players feel they are being forced to choose between identity and sport. “This is not what they want,” Tlili says. “They really want to practice in France because all their family and friends are there, and they are proud to be French.”