Controversy surrounds French ban on hijab as Olympics get underway

French Olympic sprinter Sounkamba Sylla took to social media days before the 2024 Olympic Games began, saying she would not be allowed to participate in the opening ceremony because of her hijab.

"You are selected for the Olympics, organized in your country, but you can't participate in the opening ceremony because you wear a headscarf," Sylla wrote on her private Instagram, according to The Associated Press.

The criticism was the latest in an ongoing controversy over France's rule prohibiting female Muslim athletes from wearing the hijab, or headscarves, during the Olympics. The athletes, while competing for France, are considering civil servants and must adhere to principles of secularism, according to the country's rules.

French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra later said she'd be allowed to participate in the opening ceremony and the Games by covering her hair in a way that did not appear religious.

Bans on hijab in French sports

Bans on wearing hijab in French sports have applied at all levels, including amateur and youth levels, even outside the Olympics, according to Amnesty International.

There isn't a national law or policy banning hijabs in sports, but individual sports federations have their own regulations prohibiting the headscarf. Football (soccer), basketball and volleyball are some of the team sports banning them, Anna Blus, a women's rights and gender justice researcher at Amnesty International, told ABC News.

A ban against wearing the hijab in football was instituted in 2006. In basketball, it began in 2022 and in volleyball in 2023.

"We have documented over the years -- [for] around 20 years -- measures are being introduced constantly to limit Muslim women's rights," Blus said of France.

"There's definitely been an increase in these types of measures in different areas of life over the past 20 years," Blus said.

In 2023, France's highest administrative court sided with the French Football Federation allowing its hijab ban in the sport.

"The reasoning it gave was very, very problematic, because it said that these types of bans like the one in the Football Federation, were legitimate -- the justification could be to avoid clashes or confrontation," Blus said.

"It's suggesting that clashes or confrontations might occur if someone wears a hijab, and that in order to protect that athlete, she can be banned, and she should be banned from wearing it. It's extremely problematic," Blus said.

Basket Pour Toutes, a collective that says it is fighting against discrimination in basketball, said the argument the ban seeks to maintain public order "tends to stigmatize a part of the population which is already the subject of numerous prejudices," the group said on its website.

Basket Pour Toutes, which translate to "Basketball for all" in English, also said "secularism is not above fundamental freedoms."

"The [French Federation of Basketball] maintains that the ban on equipment with religious connotations is based on the principle of neutrality which itself derives from the principle of secularism. But this duty of neutrality only applies to public service agents and not to its users," Basket Pour Toutes wrote.

Since the court decision came out, the Hijabeuses -- a collective of female athletes who wear the hijab and had brought the complaint against the Football Federation -- have made an application to the European Court of Human rights, which has jurisdiction over France.

Their application is still pending and could likely take a couple of years, Blus said.

"Litigation is only one kind of tool that can be used and it takes many years sometimes," Blus said. "I think there is much more that we can do as human rights organizations and as campaigners to stand against these types of discriminatory measures."

Human rights groups criticize bans

Human rights groups have called on the International Olympic Committee to publicly ask sporting authorities in France to overturn bans on wearing the hijab in the Olympic Games and at all levels of sport, saying prohibitions are in place across at least six sports.

"The country's discrimination against women and girls wearing the hijab is particularly concerning given the IOC's celebration of Paris 2024 as the first 'Gender Equal Olympics,'" the groups -- including Human Rights Watch, Basket Pour Toutes and the World Players Association -- wrote in a joint letter to the IOC.

"Women and girls in France who wear the hijab have been and are being prevented from playing multiple sports including football, basketball, judo, boxing, volleyball and badminton -- even at youth and amateur levels. The hijab bans in sports have resulted in many Muslim athletes being discriminated against, invisibilised, excluded and humiliated, causing trauma and social isolation -- some have left or are considering leaving the country to seek playing opportunities elsewhere," the letter said.

Other athletes, including Diaba Konate, a French basketball player who played for Idaho State and University of California, Irvine up until this past April, have also criticized the ban. Konate said she was kept from being able to play for the French National Team again. She's not on the French team playing in the Olympics.

"I love basketball, my family, and my faith," Konate said in an open letter. "It would break my heart to give up any one of those, and yet that is what the current French Federation of Basketball guidelines are forcing me to do."

Blus said activism among Muslim athletes and activists in France is growing in a very difficult environment.

"It's really important that big international organizations, such as ours, express their solidarity with Muslim women, because they have very often -- really particularly in France, but also in other countries -- [been] subject to negative stereotypes, demonization, homogenization of what it might mean to them to wear hijab," Blus said.

"It's really a matter of feminist solidarity and of women's rights and human rights," Blus said.