The Olympics should be for all women, including Muslim women

It’s a Saturday and I just completed another park run in South London. I lie down on the warm grass and stretch. Around me, there are people of all backgrounds, racial identities, ages and abilities. This is our space, where we come every weekend and chat after racing each other to the finish line. I feel elated, energised, alive. Running has given me so much: an outlet in times of stress, a refuge from trauma, a way to challenge myself and most of all, a lot of fun. It helped me find my people and be a part of a community when I moved to London. To think that all this could be taken away from me is unbearable.

In the last few months, my runs have become faster. I have been channelling the feelings of rage and injustice into them and dedicating them to the sportswomen in France who I have been speaking with as part of my work with Amnesty International. 

Footballers, basketball players, volleyball players, gym lovers and swimmers — all prevented from doing what they love because they are Muslim and wear hijabs and other forms of religious clothing. Yes, you read that right — this is what is happening in France, the country that wants you to think it champions women’s rights. The country that proclaims its devotion to “égalité” will in just a few days host the 2024 summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

Last September, France’s minister for sport Amelie Oudea-Castera announced that no female athlete representing the country will be allowed to compete in the Games if she wears religious headgear. This country, marred by gendered Islamophobia for decades, would rather risk losing medals, discriminate against and exclude incredibly talented sportswomen from its national teams than allow them to be their full selves. 

But it’s not only during the Olympics that France does not want to see visibly Muslim women. Even at amateur levels and in regional competitions, several sports federations have banned sports hijabs. So, after training for years, excelling in their sport, coaching young girls and considering sports as a professional career, young Muslim women athletes are told to remove their hijabs or give up on their dreams. 

'It's a form of violence'

It’s “really frustrating, really humiliating,” says Hélène Bâ, a co-founder of the Basket Pour Toutes collective that campaigns to overturn such bans. Instances of referees asking teenage girls to remove parts of their clothing to participate are not uncommon.

“It’s gender-based violence because … the referees are, the majority of them are men,” Hélène tells me. “And so, it’s men asking me to take off my clothes. Whether it’s covering the head, whether it’s your T-shirt, whether it’s your dress, this is violence. … It’s a mix of a lot of discrimination and a lot of violence.”

This gender-based violence is also a manifestation of Islamophobia, perpetuating systemic racism and discrimination against Muslim women, and reflecting the continuing consequences of France’s history and legacy of colonialism, with profound impacts, particularly on racialised women.

Volleyball player Assma describes her experience of being prevented from competing. “When I wanted to register for a women's competition,” she says, “my coach told me it wouldn't be possible. So I asked her why. And she tells me right away: ‘Because you're wearing something on your head’ … At that moment, I didn't feel very well and straight away, I knew that it was going to be a problem.”

In France, a rule banning religious clothing from competitions has been in place in football since 2006. A collective of hijab-wearing football players called the Hijabeuses challenged it before French courts, and now also at the European Court of Human Rights. They recently organized “alternative Olympic Games” — truly inclusive of all — near Paris.

One of its co-founders, Founé Diawara, stressed to Amnesty International: “Our fight is not political or religious but centred on our human right to participate in sports. Many women are excluded from football fields in France every weekend solely because they wear a veil.”

Sports hijabs that meet the safety requirements are authorised by international sports federations such as FIFA, FIBA and FIVB. Moreover, France is the only country in Europe with bans on religious headwear in sports such as women’s football, basketball and volleyball. No other country in the region, at the level of national laws or individual sports regulations, has enshrined bans on religious headwear such as those worn by some Muslim sportswomen and girls.  

Discrimination against Muslim women and girls in sport

The bans are discriminatory and violate the human rights of Muslim women and girls who wear religious headwear and who play sports, including their right to equality, freedom of expression, association, religion, health, bodily autonomy, and physical and psychological integrity, among others. 

The right to participate in sport itself is a human right under the full spectrum of human rights, for example, the right to take part in cultural life, the right to health, including mental health, the right to participate in public life and take decisions about one’s own body and private life. All of these rights must be respected and protected for everyone without discrimination.

Hijab bans in sports, and beyond, are a feminist issue and a matter of racial and gender justice as well as a human rights concern. Religion is often a racialised category. Muslim people in Europe are racialized in categories encompassing perceived race, ethnicity and/or nationality, irrespective of their religious practice and actual religion.

The wearing of headscarves and other types of religious clothing by Muslim women has long been instrumentalised and negatively stereotyped in our region, particularly in France, to demonise them and homogenise the diverse significance such clothing represents to those who wear it or would wish to do so.   

No woman should be coerced into decisions about her clothing or face the impossible choice between career and faith, identity and autonomy.

If the discriminatory bans at amateur and professional levels are not eliminated, even fewer Muslim women athletes — who already face systemic barriers in accessing sports in France — will ever reach the Olympics and Paralympics.

This is why ahead of, and during, the forthcoming Paris Olympics and Paralympics, Amnesty International is calling for an end to these violations of women and girl athletes’ human rights.

We call on everyone who understands the transformational power of sport to use their voice against these racist, discriminatory and harmful bans on sports hijab. Please use your voice and show solidarity with Muslim women athletes in France.