PARIS – Salimata Sylla was about to lead her team onto the basketball court, as she had done many times before.

On that Sunday morning, she and her teammates had completed a three-hour bus trip from the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers to a rival club in northern France. They had changed and warmed up, and Sylla, the team captain, was ready to go.

But moments before tipoff, she was told she could not play. The reason? Her headscarf.

More than two years later, Sylla is still barred from competing under the French basketball federation’s jurisdiction.

The 27-year-old former point guard is among thousands of young Muslim women in France who are sidelined from competitive sport because of bans on uniforms and other clothing that have religious or political significance. These rules, critics say, disproportionately target hijab-wearing Muslim athletes.

Now, a contentious bill backed by right-wing politicians that would ban headscarves in all sporting competitions has cleared its first legislative hurdle in the Senate. If passed by the lower house, it would enshrine into law what has until now been decided by individual sporting federations.

Supporters say the proposed law is a necessary step to protect secularism — a pillar of the French Republic. Opponents denounce it as discriminatory, Islamophobic, and a violation of both the rule of law and the very concept of secularism.

Athlete who wears hijab says it’s a personal decision

“We know that sport is a vehicle for emancipation, especially for girls,” Sylla told The Associated Press. “So what are they really trying to tell us? They think we’re oppressed because we wear our headscarf? But in the end, they’re also oppressing us because they’ve excluded us from basketball courts. We chose to be Muslims. Under no circumstances should you tell me what we should or shouldn’t wear.”

In January 2023, she was told to remove her headscarf if she wanted to play against rival club Escaudain in the National 3 league. Sylla refused, citing personal conviction and the fact that her sports hijab was officially approved and deemed suitable for competitive use.

Only then did she learn that the basketball federation’s rules banned all head coverings as inappropriate for play, contrary to the rules of the international basketball federation.

“I was really shocked,” Sylla said. “I went to see the referee to tell him that I’d played eight games with it since the start of the season and that no one had banned me from playing with it. And he said: ‘I’m sorry, here are the rules.’”

The French federation did not provide The Associated Press with an explanation for the ban on hijabs in competitions.

Sylla, who this year made a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, has stopped playing with her former club. She continues hosting games outside of the federation’s jurisdiction, organizing monthly tournaments in Paris and its suburbs that are open to women playing basketball with or without a hijab.

“You don’t want to include us? So we’re going to include everyone,” Sylla said.

Secularism still a hot-button issue

Until now, sports federations have been free to decide whether to allow headscarves. One of the country’s predominant sports, soccer, opted to ban them.

A date has yet to be set for the bill to be debated in the lower house of the Parliament. To pass, it would need a coalition of forces that don’t usually work together in the deeply divided National Assembly.

But the senators’ vote in favor of the bill has already reignited the ongoing debate on secularism and the separation of church and state. It’s still a hot-button issue more than a century after a 1905 law established it as a principle of the French Republic.

French secularism — “la laïcité” — affirms the concept of religious freedom, while stipulating that the state does not favor any religion and remains neutral. At its most basic level, it holds that everyone in France is free to believe — or to not believe — and free to worship as they want but not to foist their religious beliefs on others in public spaces. Conceived to protect everyone’s religious freedom after centuries of bloody religious wars, the laïcité is now seen by critics as a pretext to discriminate and restrict Muslims’ access to public life.

“Les Hijabeuses” at the forefront

A group of headscarf-wearing soccer players called “Les Hijabeuses,” who campaign against the ban, say the new bill would unfairly force Muslim women to choose between wearing a headscarf or playing a sport.

“We reject this injustice,” they said. “Because this law has no place in France. And it never will. We will continue to fight until this choice is no longer imposed.”

After France’s highest administrative court ruled in 2023 that the soccer federation can ban headscarves in matches, the Hijabeuses have lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against France, alleging a violation of their freedom of religion.

Supporters of the bill cite growing attacks on secularism in sport, arguing that its core values are based on a principle of universality. To protect sports grounds from any nonsporting confrontation, they say, a principle of neutrality needs to be implemented to ensure that no political, religious or racial agenda can be promoted.

“For several years now, governing bodies and local elected officials have been warning of the rampant spread of the ideas of the architects of radicalization and proselytism in sport,” said Michel Savin, the senator who promoted the bill. “Whenever they can, they try to test the limits of our republican principles.”

Nicolas Cadène, the former secretary-general of the now defunct Observatory for Laïcité, a nonpartisan institution that previously advised the French government, says the principles of French secularism cannot be used to justify the headscarf ban.

“The state, because it is secular, has no business judging a religious symbol,” he said. “That is not its concern. The state does not deal with religious symbols — it only prohibits them for those who represent the public administration. This law aims to exclude all these young women.”

A heated debate sparking divisions

The bill is dividing the government and pitting athletes against each other.

Five-time Olympic judo champion Teddy Riner — a towering figure in French sports — has joined the fray, arguing that the bill was targeting one religion, and that French society should instead focus on promoting equality. Mahyar Monshipour, a former professional boxer born in Iran, hit back, asking Riner not to get involved in a debate he did not understand.

“The headscarf — which is not, as they would have you believe, a piece of cloth covering the hair but rather a ‘shroud’ meant to conceal the bodies of women from the onset of menstruation — is in itself a visible sign of an institutionalized and legitimized inequality between men and women,” Monshipour argued.

The dispute has exposed cracks within the coalition government. While some ministers have expressed doubts about the bill, it has the strong backing of hard-right heavyweights such as Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau.

The hijab “radically questions the equality of men and women, and is a sign of the degradation of the status of women,” he said. “Obviously not all women who wear the veil are Islamists. But you won’t find a single Islamist who doesn’t want women to wear the veil.”

Lawmakers have previously approved a bill to strengthen oversight of mosques, schools and sports clubs. With France bloodied by terror attacks, there is widespread sentiment that Islamic radicalization was a danger. But critics also viewed that 2021 law as a political ploy to lure the right wing to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party ahead of the presidential election that Macron won.

With the next presidential election two years away, the debate over radical Islam has resurfaced, returning to the spotlight following the recent release of a government-commissioned report that raised concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts to expand its influence in France through grassroots organizations, including sports clubs.

France stands alone with religious headwear ban

Amnesty International said the new bill targets Muslim women and girls by excluding them from sporting competitions if they wear a headscarf or other religious clothing. Ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games, Amnesty published research looking at rules in 38 European countries and found that France was the only country to ban religious headwear in sport.

“If the law passes, France will be the only democracy in the world to ban all religious head coverings or accessories in sports,” Cadène said.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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