Stanislas Guerini, one of the co-founders of Macron`s centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) party, criticized Zemmahi, an engineer running for his city council, on Twitter for wearing her hijab, a religious head covering worn by some Muslim women, in an advertising image. Another posted: “I thought we had covered this before. Forcing a woman to wear a hijab is wrong. Just as it is wrong to force them to remove it. It`s YOUR decision. The case was brought by Sarah Asmeta, a 30-year-old French-Syrian lawyer wearing the hijab, who challenged a Lille Bar Council rule banning religious marks in their courtrooms because it was discriminatory. The French Senate voted 160-143 in January to ban the wearing of the hijab and other “presumed religious symbols” in sports competitions after an amendment was proposed by Les Républicains, a right-wing party that argued that headscarves can endanger the safety of athletes who wear them. “Countries like France talk about empowering women, but when it comes to Muslim women, they back down by marginalizing Muslim women through the hijab ban,” Khan told CNN ahead of World Hijab Day on Feb. 1. Mama Diakit© is 23 years old and has been playing club football for 10 years. But all that could change, she says, if a ban proposed by the French Senate on wearing the hijab in sport becomes law.

At election time, there was also controversy over candidates appearing on hijab-wearing posters, although this is completely legal and does not violate secular principles. “No government should regulate how a woman can dress, whether to wear or take it off,” she tweeted, referring to the hijab. However, the hijab or headscarf is completely legal in public spaces such as shops, cafes and on the street, and it is common to see women wearing it, especially in some areas of big cities like Paris. But understanding why the hijab is the scene of so much controversy in France also requires understanding the deep history behind the debate. “Muslim women who wear the hijab have always been victims of Islamophobia for their visible identity,” Nazma Khan, founder of World Hijab Day, told TIME. “Simply put, the proposed hijab ban is a systematic denigration and discrimination against Muslim women in hijab.” “Banning the hijab is linked to colonialism,” Alia Al-Saji, an associate professor of philosophy at McGill University, told TIME. “French colonization of Muslim lands often consisted of controlling and managing populations of different religions. The hijab is a way to make it clear that you are Muslim, which is built colonially to be against colonialism. But it is also a place of potential resistance. An anti-hijab amendment was proposed last year by a group of right-wing senators as part of an “anti-separatism” bill.

The National Assembly, which had the final say on the bill, rejected it and is expected to reject the amendment again this year. Macron`s party opposes banning the hijab in sport, as does Sports Minister Roxana Maracinenau. The French Ban on Face Coverings (French: Law No. 2010-1192: Law prohibiting the concealment of the face in public spaces[1] is an Act of Parliament passed by the French Senate on September 14, 2010, which results in the prohibition of the wearing of head covering the face. including masks, helmets, hoods, niqābs and other veils covering the face in public places, except in certain circumstances. This ban does not apply to the hijab, as it does not cover the face. The ban also applies to the burqa, a full body covering if it covers the face. Therefore, full suits and centais (tight-fitting clothing that covers the entire body) were banned. The law had already been adopted on 13 July.

It was adopted by the French National Assembly in July 2010. [2] In April 2011, France became the first European country to ban the full-face veil in public. [3] No, the France does not prohibit the hijab in public spaces. However, the rules differ when it comes to headscarves and full face coverings, which can be confusing as full-face veils and Muslim headscarves are often referred to as veils in English. Many athletes participated in the Olympics in hijab, and various headscarf designs were developed so that Muslim women could compete safely with their heads covered. The legislator has also decided to ban burkinis in swimming pools and to prohibit anyone wearing religious symbols from participating in a sporting event or competition organized by a sports association or federation. In a context where the French Football Federation is the only international body to exclude women wearing the hijab from sport, the Senate is increasing pressure on Muslim women who are constantly threatened with exclusion. This importance has been reinforced by the state`s unwavering advocacy for a unified French cultural and social identity as opposed to multiculturalism. This belief dates back to the French Revolution, to which the seeds of secularism, the principle of secularism of France, were also attributed. Although secularism has its origins in a 1905 law on the separation of church and state, in recent years it has been used as the driving force behind anti-hijab policy.

U. Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad wrote on her Instagram account: “This is what happens when we normalize anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic discourse and discrimination – a hijab ban that violates religious freedom. The regulation of Muslim women`s bodies in the name of secularism is both Islamophobic and oppressive. When she invited me to an Instagram Live session to help her followers understand the situation in France, we were reminded that she might not have been champion if she had competed in France, where Les Hijabeuses was founded to fight discrimination in football. How can we be proud that the 2018 Men`s World Cup was won by a French team made up of a large number of Muslim players, while Muslim women were prevented from achieving the same goal? “It almost means the end of football for me,” said Diakitã©, a member of the Hijabeuses, a Paris-based collective of young female hijab-wearing footballers that campaigns against the ban and fights against what they call the exclusion of Muslim women from sport. No government should regulate how a woman can dress, whether she keeps it or takes it off. #handsoffmyhijab #FranceHijabBan pic.twitter.com/VfuHi02Gqj French lawmakers and politicians have tried in recent years to extend restrictions on wearing the hijab, for example, to mothers accompanying their children on school trips and football players. As Iranian women burn their hijab to protest the country`s repressive laws, you may have heard that they compare it to the French hijab ban – but is the Muslim headscarf actually banned in France? The French Senate has passed a measure that would ban people under 18 from wearing a hijab in public. This is an amendment to a law introduced by the government to combat religious extremism. Another amendment would ban the body-covering swimsuit, known as a burkini, on public pools and beaches. Although these are unlikely to become law, they continue a debate among French lawmakers over Muslim clothing.

And we`ll be joined by NPR`s Eleanor Beardsley in Paris to discuss it. Hello, Eleanor. “France, the world is watching,” U.S. Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) recently wrote on Instagram with a video of herself wearing her religious headgear with the viral hashtag #handsoffmyhijab. The hashtag, created by Muslim American women to support their French counterparts, spawned millions of videos on TikTok after the French Senate decided to ban children under 18 and mothers accompanying them on school trips from wearing the hijab and ban burkinis in swimming pools.