Players challenge French football ban on hijab

It happened again on a recent Saturday afternoon in Sarcelles, a suburb in the northern part of Paris. The amateur team she plays for had arrived to face the local club and Diakité, 23, a Muslim midfielder, was afraid she wouldn’t be allowed to play in the hijab.

The referee let her onto the field that day. “It worked,” she said at the end of the game as she leaned against the fence bordering the field, her smiling face framed by a black Nike headscarf.

But Diakité had simply escaped by luck.

For years, the French Football Federation has banned players participating in official matches from wearing “conspicuous religious symbols” such as hijabs, a rule the organization says stems from its strictly secular values. While the ban is loosely enforced in amateur categories, it has hung over Muslim players for years, destroying their hopes for professional careers in the sport and prompting some to abandon football altogether.

In an increasingly multicultural France where women’s football is flourishing, the ban is also provoking an increasingly strong backlash. And at the forefront of this is Les Hijabeuses, a group of young female soccer players from different teams who wear the hijab and have joined forces for a campaign against what they describe as a discriminatory rule that excludes Muslim women from the sport. .

Their activism had repercussions in France, prompting the resumption of heated debates about the integration of Muslims in a country whose relationship with Islam is complicated, and exposing the difficulties of French sports authorities in reconciling their defense of strictly secular values ​​and the growing calls for greater representation in the field.

“What we want is to be accepted as we are, to put these great diversity and inclusion slogans into practice,” said Foune Diawara, president of Les Hijabeuses, which has 80 members. “Our only wish is to play football.”

The collective was created in 2020 with the help of researchers and community organizers, in an attempt to resolve a paradox: even though French laws and FIFA, the organization that governs world football, allow sportsmen to play wearing hijabs, the French federation prohibits it, arguing that it would violate the principle of religious neutrality in the field.

Proponents of the ban say hijabs are a portent of the advance of Islamic radicalization in sport. But the Hijabeuses’ personal stories underscore the way football was synonymous with emancipation for them, and how banning continues to feel like a step backwards.

Diakité started playing soccer at the age of 12, initially hidden from her parents, who saw the sport as a boy thing. “I wanted to be a professional footballer,” she said, defining that goal as her “dream”.

Jean-Claude Njehoya, Diakité’s current coach, said that “when she was younger, she had a lot of technique”, which could have taken her to the highest level of the sport. But “from the moment she understood” that the hijab ban would impact her, he said, “she stopped struggling to evolve.”

Diakité said he decided on his own that he would wear the hijab in 2018 — and that he would abandon his football dream. She now plays for a third division club and plans to open a driving school. “I have no regrets,” she said. “Either I’m accepted as I am or I’m not. That’s it and that’s it.”

Karthoum Dembele, 19, a midfielder who wears a nose ring, also said he had to confront his mother to be allowed to play. She quickly joined an intensive high school sports program and participated in club tryouts. But it wasn’t until she found out about the ban four years ago that she realized there was a possibility that she wouldn’t be allowed to compete.

“I managed to get my mother to give in, and then they tell me the federation won’t let me play,” Dembele said. “And I said to myself: what nonsense!”

Other members of the group recall episodes of referees who prevented them from entering the field, which led some of them to abandon football, having felt humiliated, and opting for sports in which hijab is allowed or tolerated, such as handball or the futsal.

Over the past year, Les Hijabeuses has lobbied the French Football Federation to overturn the ban. They sent letters, met with leaders and even organized a protest in front of the organization’s headquarters – to no avail. Sought by the report, the federation declined to comment.

Paradoxically, it was Les Hijabeuses’ biggest opponents that ultimately brought them to attention.

In January, a group of conservative senators tried to enact the federation’s ban on hijab into law, arguing that the piece threatened to promote the spread of Islamic radicalism in sports clubs. The campaign reflected France’s persistent unease over Islamic veils, which regularly cause controversy. In 2019, a French store abandoned its plans to sell a hijab designed for runners after suffering a barrage of criticism.

Energized by the efforts of the senators, the members of Les Hijabeuses organized an intensive lobbying campaign against the amendment. Making the most of their strong social media presence – the group has around 30,000 Instagram followers – they launched a petition that gathered more than 70,000 signatures; they got the support of dozens of sports celebrities for their cause; and they organized games in front of the Senate headquarters, with the participation of professional athletes.

Vikash Dhorasoo, who played professional football in France as a midfielder, said the ban scares him. “I can’t understand,” he said. “It’s the Muslims who are the target in this case.”

Stéphane Piednoir, the senator behind the amendment, denied the charge that it was aimed directly at Muslims, saying the focus was all conspicuous religious emblems. But he acknowledged that the bill had been motivated by the Muslim headscarf, which he defined as “a propaganda vehicle” for political Islam and a form of “visual proselytism”.

Piednoir also criticized Paris Saint-Germain star Neymar’s display of Catholic tattoos as “unhappy” and publicly considered extending the ban to them.

The amendment ended up being rejected by the ruling majority in the legislature, although not without friction. Paris police banned a protest organized by Les Hijabeuses, and France’s sports minister, who said the law allows women to play in hijabs, clashed with government colleagues over the headscarf.

The battle of the Hijabeuses may not be popular in France, where 60% of people support a ban on wearing hijabs on the streets, according to a recent opinion poll by the CSA institute. Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate who will face President Emmanuel Macron in the second round of presidential elections on April 24 – and has a chance of victory – has already declared that, if elected, she will ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in places public.

But on the football field everyone seems to agree that hijabs should be allowed.

“Nobody cares if they play with the hijab,” said Rana Kenar, 17, a Sarcelles player who was on the pitch to face the Diakité club on a frigid February night.

Kenar was sitting in the stands with 20 other players. All said they saw the ban as a form of discrimination and pointed out that in amateur games the ban was not strictly enforced.

Even the match referee who allowed Diakité on the field seemed dissatisfied with the ban. “I pretended not to,” he said, refusing to reveal his name to avoid repercussions.

Pierre Samsonoff, former vice-president of the French Football Federation’s amateur division, said the issue would inevitably resurface in the coming years, with the development of women’s football and Paris’ position as host of the 2024 Olympics, which will involve athletes from Muslim countries.

Samsonoff, who initially advocated banning the hijab, said he later softened his stance, acknowledging that the rule would mean excluding Muslim athletes. “The question is whether we are not creating worse consequences by deciding to ban hijab in the field than if we decide to allow it.”

Senator Piednoir said that athletes are the ones who exclude themselves. But he acknowledged not having spoken to any sportsman who wears the hijab to find out about their motivations, comparing the situation to “asking a firefighter to talk to a pyromaniac”.

Dembele, who runs Les Hijabeuses’ social media accounts, said she is sometimes shocked by the violence of online comments and fierce political opposition.

“We keep fighting,” he said. “Not only for us, but for the younger girls who tomorrow will be able to dream of playing for France, for PSG.”