A day after police banned a protest by the \u2018Hijabeuses\u2019, women footballers fighting for the right to wear religious headscarves in competition, the ban was overturned by a court. Victories are beginning to mount for the activist group: France\u2019s equality minister has also voiced her support for them. The affair is becoming a hot topic in French politics, just two months away from presidential elections.
At around 6pm on Wednesday evening, a group of young women, some of them wearing hijabs, gathered on the grassy Esplanade des Invalides in Paris, armed with placards painted with slogans like “Football for all\u201d and “Let us play”.
These women are part of the activist group \u2018The Hijabeuses\u2019, a collective of female football players fighting for the right to wear a hijab in official matches, which is banned in France. French Football Federation rules currently prevent players taking part in competitive matches from wearing “ostentatious” religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves or the Jewish kippa.
The young footballers started to knock around a ball in the dark, in front of the imposing, illuminated dome of the Invalides, their game lit up by smartphone screens and torches. Just an hour earlier they\u2019d been informed that an administrative tribunal in Paris had overturned a ban on a demonstration they had planned for that same afternoon at 4:30pm. They decided to make their way to the place where they\u2019d originally planned to protest anyway. The location was significant: This stretch of lawn is just metres away from France\u2019s lower-house National Assembly, where that morning lawmakers had hotly debated, for six hours, an amendment that would ban religious clothing or symbols in sports events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Political storm The FFF in the crosshairs Support across the sport world A day after police banned a protest by the \u2018Hijabeuses\u2019, women footballers fighting for the right to wear…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>It\u2019s a topic that has provoked fierce debate in the two chambers of France\u2019s parliament. The amendment was originally introduced by the right-wing party Les R\u00e9publicains, and it was adopted on January 19 by the upper-house Senate with 160 votes to 143.
At Wednesday\u2019s debate in the National Assembly, Les R\u00e9publicains MP \u00c9ric Ciotti, an advisor to the party’s presidential candidate Val\u00e9rie P\u00e9cresse, lambasted the government for what he considers its meekness in the face of creeping Islamism in French society. \u201cIslamism is spreading in prayer rooms, mosques, homes and now in sports clubs!\u201d he said.
R\u00e9gis Juanico, an MP for the centre-left Socialist Party, responded that sport is \u201ca vehicle for integration, republican fraternity, and not hate or division\u201d. Communist Party politician Marie-George Buffet reminded the Assembly that \u201csecularism and neutrality are at the heart of our sporting culture\u201d.
Speaking to radio station LCI on Thursday, France’s Minister for Gender Equality \u00c9lisabeth Moreno said: “The law says that these young women can wear a headscarf and play football. On football pitches today, headscarves are not forbidden. I want the law to be respected.\u201d She later added, in comments to press agency AFP, that “women should be allowed to dress as they please\u201d.
Her comments came in the wake of the court\u2019s decision to overturn the ban on the Hijabeuses\u2019 protest. The court said that the ban \u201cconstituted a serious and clearly illegal infraction on the fundamental freedom of the right to protest\u201d and ordered the police commissioner to pay a \u20ac1000 fine, which would go to the activist collective and to rights charity the Ligue des Droits de l\u2019Homme (Human Rights League).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>This latest victory hasn\u2019t made the collective forget their overall goal: to get rid of Article 1 in the French Football Federation\u2019s (FFF) regulations, which forbids wearing anything that could identify a player as having any sort of affiliation with a \u201cpolitical, philosophical, religious or trade union\u201d group. This is the rule that senators want to extend to other federations in the sporting world.
“Our objective is to fight against the exclusion of and banning of women who wear the headscarf in sport competitions. We shouldn\u2019t have to choose between wearing the headscarf and playing sport in this day and age. You just have to revisit the law and read what it says about freedom of belief and secularism to know that the law is on our side,\u201d In\u00e8s, the secretary general of the Hijabeuses, told FRANCE 24.
\u201cWhat we are asking for today is for the FFF to change its rules and enable every woman to express herself, take advantage of her passion and take part in competitions without having her heart in her mouth and the stress of constantly wondering if she\u2019s going to be able to play that day or not,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>The Hijabeuses collective began in 2020. It organises matches, sit-ins and social media campaigns to put public pressure on the FFF. Other football federations, notably FIFA, don\u2019t ban players who wear a hijab.
The pressure is certainly mounting. The French newspaper Lib\u00e9ration published an open letter on Wednesday with the headline \u201cLet women wearing the hijab play!\u201d It was signed by dozens of celebrities from the world of sport, including Eric Cantona, Candice Pr\u00e9vost and Asisat Oshoala.
The debate is ongoing, with France\u2019s Senate at odds with the National Assembly. The amendment will again go before the Senate on February 16 before going back to the Assembly for possible adoption on February 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"