French Olympians can't wear hijabs. Human rights group says its discrimination

[sl8]

"its"?

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/22/nx-s1-5043751/france-olympics-hijab-ban-amnesty-international
(3 min. audio at link)

French Olympians can’t wear hijabs. Human rights group says its discrimination

JULY 22, 2024 5:05 AM ET
HEARD ON MORNING EDITION
Reena Advani

When the 2024 Olympics start this week, France won’t allow its athletes to wear headscarves during the games – seemingly in contrast with the Olympic charter’s calls for respect of religion and protection of human rights.

A recent report from Amnesty International calls France’s restrictions on religious attire blatant discrimination and a researcher for the human rights nonprofit told NPR’s Morning Edition that, beyond being unfair, the move could cause systemic issues for women athletes in France.

[...]

The International Olympic Committee said in a statement to NPR that the host country considers athletes representing it as civil servants.

“This means that they must respect the principles of secularism and neutrality, which, according to French law, means prohibition from wearing outwardly religious symbols, including the hijab, veil and headscarf when they are acting in their official capacity and on official occasions as members of the French national team,” the statement read. “The same secular approach also applies, for instance, to civil servants and teachers.”

[...]

[JT45242]

1. Tough call...no one representing the French government is allowed to promote any religion

Their version of the no establishment clause is applied to all religions equally. All paid government workers... And like it or not, Olympic athletes are paid by the government.

A lot of understandable French fear after Cardinal Richelieu and other efforts by religious folks to impact the government.

I would rather see a position like this than the Christian nationalism of the US.

The athletes can decide which is more important to them -- competing for France as employees of the French government or their religion and wearing a headscarf.

Sandy Koufax sat out elimination playoff games for religious holidays. Other Jewish athletes chose to compete.

There are some who criticized Hakeem Alojawan for his poor play in late Sunday afternoon games during Ramadan. He could have broken the fast, but he chose not to. Did it really make a difference, who knows.

I generally don't trust the IOC as far as anything is concerned as so many of them are on the take and only apply rules sometimes (looking at Russian and Chinese doping programs).