Paris, France – Diaba Konate was a rising star in French basketball.
Known as up by the French Federation of Basketball (FFBB) at 17, she went on to play within the nationwide youth groups in three main tournaments, reaching the finals of the U18 European Championship and the Youth Olympic Video games in 2018, and profitable a gold medal on the 2019 World Seaside Video games.
On the time, the sky was the restrict.
She moved to the USA on a full scholarship to play with UC Irvine, surpassing 1,000 factors in her collegiate profession after scoring a season-high 20 towards UC Santa Barbara in February 2023.
Now 24, Konate desires of enjoying for France once more, nevertheless it has change into a trickier proposition.
What’s stopping Konate from one other nationwide call-up isn’t her potential – it’s that two years in the past, she began sporting a hijab, a scarf worn by many Muslim ladies to cowl the hair and neck.
“I by no means thought it might be a giant hindrance”, Konate instructed Al Jazeera, recalling how little modified when she began sporting it within the US at 22.
However when she needed to play in a match in France that summer season, match organisers instructed her she may solely do it if she took off her hijab.
She felt “humiliated”, and later found that this was a part of new FFBB laws that forbid gamers from sporting “any gear with a spiritual or political connotation”.
Konate felt “deserted” by the FFBB and by lots of her former nationwide coaches, who by no means contacted her after Article 9.3 banning headscarves was carried out in December 2022.
Now, Konate has turned to activism to marketing campaign with a collective referred to as Basket Pour Toutes (Basketball For All) that features principally younger hijab-wearing Muslim ladies in France who love basketball.
Collectively, they’re defying a hijab ban in basketball and throughout French sports activities.
Their marketing campaign is gaining momentum earlier than the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Video games, as French Sports activities Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera introduced final September that French athletes sporting a hijab can be banned from competing.
At present, any athlete sporting a hijab can be allowed to compete at Paris 2024 – besides in the event that they’re French.
French laïcité and its impression on Muslim ladies
Timothee Gauthierot is a basketball membership coach within the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec – he’s the co-founder of Basket Pour Toutes.
He stated that even earlier than this nationwide ban, there have been only a few hijab-wearing ladies who dreamed of changing into skilled athletes in France as a result of “there may be a lot discrimination” towards them. “We don’t enable them to achieve that stage”, he stated.
Human rights consultants have stated the hijab ban in French basketball is a part of a development of policymakers “weaponising” France’s custom of laïcité (secularism) to exclude Muslim ladies and ladies from French society, drawing parallels with legal guidelines to ban the scarf and later the abaya (loose-fitting, long-sleeved gown) in public colleges, in 2004 and in 2023, respectively.
Campaigners have repeatedly pressured the FFBB to overturn Article 9.3, which was carried out with out session from basketball golf equipment.
A number of sources instructed Al Jazeera that the FFBB launched new laws after French senators voted to ban the hijab in sporting competitions in January 2022. This set a precedent as makes an attempt by a collective of Muslim ladies footballers to permit the hijab in French soccer had been struck down.
However Rim-Sarah Alouane, a authorized knowledgeable on spiritual freedom, stated these laws “disproportionately impression Muslim ladies, thus amounting to oblique discrimination”. She added that “the precept of laïcité is supposed to make sure state neutrality in spiritual issues, to not suppress spiritual expression”.
Paris 2024 Olympics – a case of ‘sportswashing’
Paris 2024 would be the first Olympic Video games the place human rights provisions are included in its Host Metropolis Contract.
The contract states that Paris 2024 intends to “assure respect for the human rights of all populations positioned below its duty through the organisation”.
Forward of the Olympics, Basket Pour Toutes is pushing for each the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Worldwide Basketball Federation (FIBA) to intervene towards France’s hijab ban.
FIBA itself had a hijab ban till 2017, when it was overturned after an advocacy marketing campaign. In the meantime, the IOC permits athletes to put on headscarves in its competitions, however has not responded to letters by Amnesty Worldwide, FairSquare and the Sport and Rights Alliance calling for it to make sure France permits its hijab-wearing athletes to play sports activities.
For these causes, Shireen Ahmed, an award-winning journalist targeted on Muslim ladies in sports activities, stated that these Olympics are the “greatest case of sportswashing”, as France claims to guard human rights whereas “being anti-Muslim in its personal yard”.
This subject is “all about alternative” Ahmed stated, describing how this ban pertains to points round ladies’s bodily autonomy and reveals an try by policymakers to dictate what ladies can or can not put on.
“Our objection just isn’t with laïcité [secularism], it’s that it’s erratically utilized,” she stated, noting how male athletes who put on a spiritual cross don’t face the identical scrutiny.
The trickle-down results of French basketball’s hijab ban
In the meantime, the French Federation of Basketball’s ban is having harsh results on feminine Muslim athletes in France.
December 4, 2022 was the date that Helene Ba was first instructed she was banned from enjoying basketball.
Ba, a 22-year-old legislation pupil who grew up within the Paris suburb of Yvelines, recollects that “essentially the most violent factor” on that match day was that the referee instructed her coach, as a substitute of her, that she couldn’t play.
She stated the referee didn’t even point out Article 9.3 – however as a substitute remarked that sporting a hijab was “an issue of hazard”.
However, figuring out the legislation, she fought again.
“I stated that I wouldn’t take off my hijab,” Ba instructed Al Jazeera. “FIBA [the world basketball body] authorises it, and this was an area match. It’s violent to ask a girl to take off a chunk of fabric. It is a authorized declare and we have now the correct to faith and the liberty to follow sports activities.”
However Ba stated this didn’t cease folks within the stands from asking “Are you positive you don’t need to take it off?” She refused to as a result of “religion all the time comes first”, she stated. Ba then left the stadium and her workforce performed with out her.
It was then that Ba realised she needed to do one thing about this, not only for her however for all Muslim athletes in France. “If you assault the freedoms of minorities, you assault everybody,” Ba stated. “This [Article 9.3] damages the picture of basketball.”
By way of mutual acquaintances, Ba would meet two pivotal folks with whom she would co-found Basket Pour Toutes: coach Timothee Gauthierot and sociologist Haifa Tlili.
After conducting greater than 150 interviews with Muslim ladies in sports activities in France, Tlili stated that “we don’t realise the results of those traumas” triggered by the hijab ban.
“Many ladies have instructed me: ‘In case you take basketball away from me, what do I’ve left?’,” she stated.
Solidarity and criminalisation on the basketball courtroom
Badiaga Coumba, a 21-year-old who performs in Gauthierot’s membership in Noisy-le-Sec, stated that for the reason that FFBB’s ruling took impact, she has felt misplaced, not sure what to do with herself, and has just about given up basketball, though she considers her teammates her “second household”.
However in contrast to Ba, who was one of many solely Muslim athletes at her membership and who was omitted when the hijab ban was carried out, Coumba is in a really numerous membership: nearly absolutely gender equal (uncommon for many basketball golf equipment), and with many Black and Muslim gamers.
On a workforce of 10 ladies, there are often three who put on the hijab, creating a powerful sense of solidarity.
When referees began telling coaches that hijab-wearing athletes couldn’t even sit on the bench, most French golf equipment adopted the foundations – however not Coumba’s membership.
The eligible gamers went on the pitch, positioned the ball on the bottom, and refused to play. Referees would rapidly grasp what was taking place, and name off the match.
Gauthierot, who has stood by his feminine athletes after they’ve accomplished this, has confronted extreme authorized reprisals by the FFBB, and even the president of the Paris area, Valerie Pecresse. On October 7, 2023, she posted on X, previously Twitter, “I name on the State to cease leaving competitors referees alone within the face of Islamist makes an attempt to destabilise sport grounds”.
After receiving a collective letter from 70 Paris golf equipment protesting this basketball hijab ban, Pecresse ordered the suspension of “any subsidy to a membership violating our constitution of laïcité”.
Since most golf equipment are depending on public funds, as many as 20 golf equipment have been closely impacted and have needed to retract their assist.
The FFBB has additionally hit again instantly towards Gauthierot, fining him 300 euros ($325) and suspending him from all official capacities in basketball for six months from September 2024, in an ongoing case that Gauthierot is legally contesting.
“They are saying that it [the hijab] can result in radicalisation, however we actually stay in concord,” Gauthierot stated. “They [the FFBB] make selections with out figuring out us.”
Gauthierot, who’s of Guadeloupean origin, cited sports activities legends who stood up towards discrimination as function fashions, like fashionable American soccer’s Colin Kaepernick; or former US runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave the Black Energy salute on the 1968 Mexico Metropolis Olympics.
“I’ve obtained nothing to lose,” stated Gauthierot, who works in IT and volunteers on the native basketball membership. “I’d somewhat do it with out discriminating towards ladies.”
Illustration issues, particularly on the Olympics
Critics of the hijab ban level out that that is taking place whereas France prepares to host the primary Olympic Video games to achieve full gender parity, making the scenario much more alarming.
“By proudly claiming that the Video games can be ‘gender equal’, the French authorities are exposing their very own hypocrisy of celebrating such alleged developments whereas on the identical time discriminating towards Muslim ladies and ladies by way of hijab bans in sports activities,” Amnesty Worldwide researcher Anna Blus stated.
Andrea Florence, director of the Sports activities & Rights Alliance, highlighted, “It’s the Olympic precept 6 [of the Olympic Charter] that folks ought to get pleasure from sports activities with out discrimination of any variety. It’s not in regards to the variety of folks banned, it’s about those that can’t even be included.”
Al Jazeera contacted the FFBB, the French Ministry of Sports activities, FIBA, and the IOC for remark. Solely FIBA replied, stating that “the headgear is allowed in Official Basketball Competitions, together with the Olympic Video games, in accordance with the Official Basketball Guidelines”. It didn’t specify if it might intervene towards the FFBB’s hijab ban.
Regardless of difficult occasions for the ladies from Basket Pour Toutes, they aren’t dropping hope of their battle for justice.
Final April, they organised an enormous match in Noisy-le-Sec open to all ladies. Twenty-five groups and 90 ladies took half, in what Helene Ba described as a chance “to point out the FFBB that every thing is ok and that we are able to play with none issues”.
In the meantime, Diaba Konate – who recognises that she is without doubt one of the few Muslim ladies in France who had the privilege to maneuver to the US to pursue the game she loves – is now coming again to her nation to pave the way in which for cultural change in French basketball, and to be nearer to household.
She stated that no girl ought to have to maneuver away from dwelling to play sports activities, and vowed to make use of her experiences to assist others.
“There’s a battle to be fought in France. I need to assist the FFBB to deconstruct stereotypes about veiled ladies as there’s lots of prejudice,” Konate stated. “We don’t need to make that alternative [between faith and sport]. We shouldn’t be compelled to do this stuff.”
“Illustration issues. It’s essential to have function fashions. You want folks [who look] such as you to be impressed. I’ve achieved every thing I needed – now it’s for the longer term generations.”
