Audiences everywhere will look back at the 2024 Olympics Games as the games that failed women: by allowing a convicted paedophile to compete, by not offering adequate protection to Imane Khelif, and by forcing Muslim women to compromise their faith in order to participate.
But in a world where the playing field is very rarely even, and the track ahead is littered with different obstacles for different people, it begs the question of why France has so adamantly added further barriers to Muslim women.
France has shown no regret in its decision to ban hijabs and headscarves at the 2024 Olympic Games and risk the damaging ramifications to Muslim girls and women around the world.
France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim minority, reignited a secularism controversy when it ruled that female Muslim athletes were prohibited from wearing the hijab or headscarves in the Olympics.
Muslimah Sports Associated (MSA) Trustee, Lipa Nessa said: “I am looking at everything happening and it is shocking but not surprising.”
“It’s unfair and it’s frustrating to marginalise a community that has already been hit several times and it is not how sport works at all.”
Lipa Nessa, MSA Trustee
Muslimah Sports Association (MSA) is a London-based non-profit organisation which celebrates diversity and encourages women from ethnic minority backgrounds to participate in sports without compromising their religious or cultural norms and values.
In 2023 MSA published an Impact Report which surveyed British Muslim Women on their relationships with sport.
The research found that ninety-seven percent of British Muslim Women wanted to increase their participation in sports.
Lipa said: “One of the main barriers of Muslim women accessing sport is not modest activewear, we have a lot of that, but it’s more so about the accessibility to facilities.”
Forty-three percent of British Muslim women said that current sport facilities were not appropriate for them, and over a third of British Muslim women said that past experiences have negatively impacted their participation in sports.
Eighty percent of British Muslim women said they would be more likely to participate in sports if they were women only sessions.
“One of our most demanded sports is swimming, but in the UK most swimming pools are usually attached to leisure centres or gyms which overlook the swimming pool or the area has glass around it,” says Lipa.
“So if a young girl observes modesty and wants to learn how to swim, she now has to find a swimming pool that is not shown to everyone else…and swimming is essential, it can be a matter of survival.”
Amnesty International said that the hijab ban makes a mockery of a Gender Equal Olympics – a celebrated ideal that Paris 2024 would see an equal number of male and female athletes competing.
Anna Błuś, Women’s Rights Researcher in Europe for Amnesty International says that the ban “lays bare the racist gender discrimination that underpins access to sport in France”.
Having looked at thirty-eight countries in Europe, Amnesty International says only France had enshrined bans on religious headwear in national law or individual sports regulations.
For women everywhere the ban is another showcase of female oppression and gender-biassed decision making – another government dominated by men enforcing rules on women.
For Muslim women, the ban is exclusionary, humiliating, and reinforces an idea that Muslims and Muslim women are not welcome in ‘western’ spaces, including sport.
This is not the first time France has led with discriminatory politics, says Lipa; “This was a topic of discussion for many years prior to them even hosting the Olympics.”
In 2010, France became the first European country to impose a ban on various face coverings, including niqābs, and burqas in public spaces.
Lips says: “To see that France has blocked some women from participating in their olympic games…it is just a repeat of what they’ve always done.”
“It is so deeply, deeply frustrating because that doesn’t represent sports at all.”
“It one-hundred percent affects muslim women and girls that want to make that choice for themselves to wear the hijab.”
“Unfortunately there is a whole pool of talent that is untouched because of these rules and policies that really puts pressure on minority groups and further segregates communities.”
“We have been shown time and time again how important it is for young girls and women to have access to sport. For fitness, mental health, and for confidence and growth. Representation, and seeing others succeed in a way in which we see ourselves is so important.”
“Wearing the hijab is not just showing that you are Muslim but it gives you that spiritual connection.”
“For young girls especially when school, education, work and homelife feels like a lot, having a spiritual connection is so important…Not only spiritual connection but being able to go out there and play the sport and forget about the world.”
“I think sport is brilliant at that and brilliant at elevating mental wellness and wellbeing from young people all the way up to adults and senior citizens.”
“I’d like to see more governing bodies coming together, like neighbouring countries coming together to educate those who are lacking in their openness to other religions and other minority groups to say this does not effect X,Y,Z and here’s how we know this.”
“I think research will help, whether it be through articles or France actually going and seeing another nations training but if a nation has already closed off its mind to other minority groups then it is difficult.”
“Nations need to unite together to help these minority groups shine because France is going to lose a lot of talent which is very scary for up and coming Muslim girls who want to pursue a career in sport in some capacity.”
Lipa says the Muslimah Sport Association is a grassroots organisation committed to expanding in the sports sector, “we are on a mission to empower women to fall in love with sport.”
The group has been welcoming women to fall in love with sport for a decade and has amassed over two-thousands participants. The group organises an average of fifteen activities per week, hosted by over ninety coaches, many of whom were once participants themselves.
