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 Seashore 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 in opposition to UC Santa Barbara in February 2023.

Now 24, Konate desires of enjoying for France once more, however it has turn 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 carrying a hijab, a scarf worn by many Muslim ladies to cowl the hair and neck.

“I by no means thought it will be a giant hindrance”, Konate instructed Al Jazeera, recalling how little modified when she began carrying it within the US at 22.

However when she wished to play in a match in France that summer time, match organisers instructed her she might 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 carrying “any tools with a spiritual or political connotation”.

Konate felt “deserted” by the FFBB and by a lot 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 known as Basket Pour Toutes (Basketball For All) that features largely 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 carrying a hijab will likely be banned from competing.

At the moment, any athlete carrying a hijab will likely 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 mentioned that even earlier than this nationwide ban, there have been only a few hijab-wearing ladies who dreamed of turning into skilled athletes in France as a result of “there may be a lot discrimination” in opposition to them. “We don’t permit them to succeed in that stage”, he mentioned.

Human rights consultants have mentioned the hijab ban in French basketball is a part of a pattern 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 skilled on spiritual freedom, mentioned 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 in the course of 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 in opposition to 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 centered on Muslim ladies in sports activities, mentioned 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 problem is “all about selection” Ahmed mentioned, 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’t put on.

“Our objection shouldn’t be with laïcité [secularism], it’s that it’s erratically utilized,” she mentioned, 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 regulation pupil who grew up within the Paris suburb of Yvelines, recollects that “probably the most violent factor” on that match day was that the referee instructed her coach, as an alternative of her, that she couldn’t play.

She mentioned the referee didn’t even point out Article 9.3 – however as an alternative remarked that carrying a hijab was “an issue of hazard”.

However, understanding the regulation, she fought again.

“I mentioned that I wouldn’t take off my hijab,” Ba instructed Al Jazeera. “FIBA [the world basketball body] authorises it, and this was a neighborhood match. It’s violent to ask a lady to take off a bit of material. This can be a authorized declare and we now have the best to faith and the liberty to observe sports activities.”

However Ba mentioned this didn’t cease folks within the stands from asking “Are you certain you don’t need to take it off?” She refused to as a result of “religion all the time comes first”, she mentioned. Ba then left the stadium and her crew 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. “Whenever you assault the freedoms of minorities, you assault everybody,” Ba mentioned. “This [Article 9.3] damages the picture of basketball.”

Via 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 mentioned that “we don’t realise the consequences of those traumas” triggered by the hijab ban.

“Many ladies have instructed me: ‘When you take basketball away from me, what do I’ve left?’,” she mentioned.

Solidarity and criminalisation on the basketball court docket

Badiaga Coumba, a 21-year-old who performs in Gauthierot’s membership in Noisy-le-Sec, mentioned that because the 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 not like Ba, who was one of many solely Muslim athletes at her membership and who was ignored when the hijab ban was carried out, Coumba is in a really numerous membership: virtually absolutely gender equal (uncommon for many basketball golf equipment), and with many Black and Muslim gamers.

On a crew of 10 ladies, there are normally 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 shortly grasp what was occurring, and name off the match.

Gauthierot, who has stood by his feminine athletes after they’ve achieved 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 help.

The FFBB has additionally hit again straight in opposition to 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 dwell in concord,” Gauthierot mentioned. “They [the FFBB] make choices with out understanding us.”

Gauthierot, who’s of Guadeloupean origin, cited sports activities legends who stood up in opposition to 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 bought nothing to lose,” mentioned Gauthierot, who works in IT and volunteers on the native basketball membership. “I’d quite do it with out discriminating in opposition to ladies.”

Illustration issues, particularly on the Olympics

Critics of the hijab ban level out that that is occurring whereas France prepares to host the primary Olympic Video games to succeed in full gender parity, making the scenario much more alarming.

“By proudly claiming that the Video games will likely be ‘gender equal’, the French authorities are exposing their very own hypocrisy of celebrating such alleged developments whereas on the identical time discriminating in opposition to Muslim ladies and ladies by hijab bans in sports activities,” Amnesty Worldwide researcher Anna Blus mentioned.

Andrea Florence, director of the Sports activities & Rights Alliance, highlighted, “It’s the Olympic precept 6 [of the Olympic Charter] that folks ought to take pleasure in sports activities with out discrimination of any sort. It’s not concerning 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 will intervene in opposition to the FFBB’s hijab ban.

Regardless of difficult instances for the ladies from Basket Pour Toutes, they don’t seem to be shedding 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 possibility “to point out the FFBB that every part is ok and that we will play with none issues”.

In the meantime, Diaba Konate – who recognises that she is among 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 best way for cultural change in French basketball, and to be nearer to household.

She mentioned that no lady ought to have to maneuver away from residence to play sports activities, and vowed to make use of her experiences to help 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 a whole lot of prejudice,” Konate mentioned. “We don’t need to make that selection [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 completed every part I wished – now it’s for the long run generations.”