This week the world watched Paris begin to host the 2024 Olympics. The opening ceremony aspired to include athletes from every nation, creed, race, orientation and religion in line with the spirit of the Olympic vision adopted in 1894, “to cooperate with the competent public or private organizations and authorities in the endeavor to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace.”
Instead, the opening ceremony has spurred questions of mockery, inclusion and tolerance.
In an age of global conflict, the Olympic vision needs to be strengthened and upheld more deliberately. Too often in the recent past the Olympics has been used to hide abuses that threaten peace — something hardly in the “service of humanity.”
The Beijing Olympics, some have argued, signaled to the international community that the genocide campaign against Uyghurs was tolerable, which has enabled years of atrocities to continue. Similar signals were sent during the 1984 Olympics, seven years before war broke out in Sarajevo, and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin before the Holocaust. But the international community is failing to catch more subtle signs that this current Olympics is failing to “service humanity and promote peace.”
This year in Paris, an entire portion of the French population will be hidden from view, completely invisible to the international community; Muslim women. On September 24, 2023 the French Minister of Sport, Amélie Oudéa-Castera, banned the hijab or headscarf for any woman in the France Olympic delegation, effectively banning Muslim women from the country’s representation.
The Minister supported the ban by stating, “the wearing of the veil [is] not a religious factor but a cultural factor” and that in line with French policy to “ban all forms of proselytizing” and uphold “the absolute neutrality of the public service,” French athletes who qualified for the Olympics who wear the hijab would not be allowed to compete with the national delegation.
This is part of a larger campaign in France, dating back to 2004 when Muslim headscarves were banned in public schools. Muslims make up approximately 10% of the French population or around 5 million people, and 25% of the global population at approximately two billion people.
French failure to include Muslim women in the Olympics sends a worrisome signal to Europe and the world — as France has justified excluding Muslim women by distorting the 1905 definition of secularism (laïcité).
Originally, laïcité concerned public services and public servants, representatives of the State, whose job it was to serve and treat all citizens equally, regardless of their philosophical or religious convictions. But athletes are not public servants and are therefore not subject to this demand of neutrality. Olympic athletes continue to bring their full identities to support and many attribute their success to faith.
The French government has done little to prove that banning the hijab in public schools or for Olympic athletes is warranted, let alone proportional to other measures to maintain secularism in France.
The decision to ban the hijab is also in direct violation of two other core tenants of the International Olympic Committee mission, including to “act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement,” and “to encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women.”
Although France claims to ban the headscarf in the name of neutrality and in order to confront female “religious oppression,” the rule disproportionately affects women who choose to practice their faith through religious clothing. This year France will achieve gender parity in the Olympic games overall. Yet if some remain excluded, that equality is only a symbolic statistic and not meaningful in actual policy.
France has justified an increasing number of restrictions on Muslim women in the name of politics, terrorism, and läicité, but many women feel the French government wants to make this population invisible to their detriment, and that’s when you realize that it’s a political action. To not take into account, to essentialize, to reduce, to control affects the lives of Muslim women every day in France. Amnesty has highlighted Diaba Konaté, former member of the French Youth National Basketball Team, who explained her choice between faith and sport is non-negotiable. “I love basketball, my family, and my faith. It would break my heart to give up any one of those.”
And Asma, a volleyball player excluded from playing volleyball in competitions in northern France, said “I want women to be able to dress how they want…. It’s not just a ‘Muslim issue’, it’s a human issue.”
Other faiths with religious clothing such as the Jewish yarmulke or the Christian cross have not been banned or restricted in the same ways. We hope this can spark new conversations in France and at the International Olympic Committee, and that all future hosts of the Olympic games will uphold freedom of religion or belief and human rights as outlined in the IOC Mission.
Perhaps this can become an opportunity to deepen understanding and reduce accusation, which risks further polarizing societies and French society in particular. Sports federations and institutions can also coordinate in the future to act more coherently when it comes to managing religious issues.
Amnesty International recently published a report calling on the international community to not look away from the banning of hijab in sport. And local efforts in France continue through petitions and advocacy to allow female Muslim athletes to wear hijab in all sport. France is a bellwether for Europe and certainly a leader in progressing human rights and gender equality. They can expand their leadership and influence now and in preparation to host the Olympics again in the future.
We must petition the International Olympic Committee, national delegations, and hearken to our shared humanity to keep the Olympics centered at the “service of humanity and thereby to promote peace.”
Rachel Miner is the Founder and CEO of Bellwether International, a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to disrupting the cycle of genocide.
Dr. Haifa Tlili French activist and researcher with a Ph.D. in Sociology from Paris Descartes-Sorbonne University working on the French hijab ban issue in sports at VUB - Rhéa.