Afghanistan's Kimia Yousofi competes in the women's 100m heats during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo on July 30, 2021.JEWEL SAMAD/Getty Images
Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.
The International Olympic Committee touts the 2024 Olympic Games as the first to nearly achieve gender parity. While six countries have no female athletes who qualified, gone are the days when the IOC repeatedly acquiesced to Saudi Arabia’s insistence on excluding women from its Olympic team. In advance of the 2012 Olympic Games, Saudi Arabia relented to prolonged international pressure and included female athletes for the first time. Since then, the country’s female participation rate has tripled, from roughly 10 per cent in 2012, to 30 per cent this year, including its first-ever female swimmer, 17-year-old Mashael Al-Ayed.
Heading into the Paris Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach has effusively declared the Games as “the youngest, most inclusive, most urban and most sustainable.” But he didn’t mention the situation some athletes from France are facing.
You see, Olympians from across the world are welcome in Paris. Except French athletes who are Jewish, Sikh or Muslim and choose to wear religious apparel as part of their faith. These women and men are banned from the French Olympic team, in accordance with the French interpretation of laïcité (secularism). While Olympic athletes from other countries are permitted to wear religious apparel in Paris, French athletes cannot because of the religious “neutrality” of the state, which dictates that civil servants are forbidden from all religious expression. According to the French government, Olympic athletes are technically civil servants.
Not surprisingly, this ban disproportionately affects Muslim women. This was made clear last September when France’s Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra announced that French Olympic athletes “will not wear the head scarf,” thus ensuring “the prohibition of any type of proselytizing and the absolute neutrality of the public service.”
Compare the French position to the Olympic Charter, which states: “the practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have access to the practice of sport, without discrimination of any kind in respect of internationally recognized human rights within the remit of the Olympic Movement.”
And here we are: France has unequivocally banned its Muslim female hijabi athletes, while hosting the Olympic Games under the auspices of the IOC, whose very charter bars such discrimination.
The IOC’s response to the French position – “freedom of religion is interpreted in many different ways by different states” – is like the waters of the Seine: murky at best. By justifying discrimination, the IOC has rendered basic human rights meaningless. No Mr. Bach, you shouldn’t be boasting about how inclusive the games are. With its “move along, there’s nothing to see here” attitude, the IOC has shamefully abandoned French Muslim hijabi athletes who aspire toward the Olympics. It has made a mockery of its own charter.
Let’s not forget the role of France’s sports organizations, whose intransigence against hijabs has expanded over the years. As Anna Błuś, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Gender Justice in Europe writes: “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.” A Muslim cannot play organized soccer, basketball or volleyball anywhere in France – even at a recreational level – if she wears a hijab. This, even though FIFA, FIBA and FIVB have authorized sports hijabs. No other European country has such draconian bans.
The ban extends to the opening ceremony. Sprinter Sounkamba Sylla was initially barred owing to her hijab, but worked out a deal with the French Olympic Committee to wear a cap instead of a head scarf as a compromise.
Les Hijabeuses, a group of soccer players, has challenged the French ban before the European Court of Human Rights. In June, they organized an “alternate Olympics,” which was more inclusive than the IOC’s version. Co-founder Founé Diawara captured its essence: “Our fight is not political or religious but centred on our human right to participate in sports.”
As Ms. Błuś states, “the Olympics should be for all women, including Muslim women.” This should be obvious in 2024, but it’s not. In the past, such challenges have sparked women to mobilize in solidarity with their sisters. In 2012, we raised our voices demanding the IOC sanction Saudi Arabia for excluding women on its Olympic team.
Today, only two countries immediately come to mind where I cannot play amateur sports, nor swim in my burkini: France and Afghanistan. France is not Afghanistan. But it is a G7 nation that is a signatory to international human rights treaties. It purports to be a champion of women’s rights. We must raise our voices again to demand the inclusion of all women in sports.