A French women's football collective that is seeking to overthrow a ban on players wearing the Islamic veil during matchs found support for their case at the Council of State on Monday. A decision is expected in three weeks time.
A Muslim women's collective known as "the Hijabeuses" launched a legal challenge to the rules in November 2021, claiming they were discriminatory and infringed their right to practise their religion freely.
The case reached the French advisory body known as the Council of State (Conseil d'Etat) on Monday where the public rapporteur, whose views are generally followed by the nine-member council, said he was against the federation's rules and recommended a rule change.
Under current rules, the French Football Federation (FFF) forbids all players, even amateurs, from wearing obvious religious symbols in the name of French secularism, preventing players from wearing Muslim headscarves or the Jewish kippa.
Public rapporteur Clement Malverti said there was no "neutrality requirement" for football players who should not be subjected to the same rules as public officials such as teachers or civil servants who are banned from displaying their religious convictions.
Football was "riddled with" religious symbols, he said, including a cross on the shirts of the professional Auxerre team, players making the sign of the cross as they enter the pitch, or having tattoos featuring religious symbols.
Women excluded
A veil ban could be considered for national players who represented the nation and were undertaking a "public service mission'", he added.
The Council of State will hand down a decision in three weeks' time.
A lawyer for the Hijabeuses, Marion Ogier, said it was "too early to cry victory", but said that the conclusions of the public rapporteur "are in our favour".
"Our combat is not political, not religious. It is about sport and only sport," Foune Diawara, head of the Hijabeuses, told reporters. "There are women who are excluded from football pitches every weekend because they wear the veil."
The players say their demand corresponds to the "freedom of conscience" clause, guaranteed by the Constitution, and point out that football's international governing body Fifa, has authorized players to play in international competitions with their veil since 2014.
Attack on the Republic
But the lawyer for the FFF, Loïc Poupot called the group's bid an "attack on the concept of living together".
"What they are looking for is to import their community's demands into football," he said.
France's interior minister was also not favorable to changing the rules.
"This is not about defending a community's right to religious expression, it's simply an attack on the Republic," Gérald Darmanin told RTL radio on Tuesday.
"You don't wear religious clothes when you play sports... When you play football, you don't need to know the religion of the person in front of you," he insisted.
"The Council of State is an extremely wise body. I deeply hope for the Republic that they will maintain neutrality on sports grounds," he concluded.
In 2012, Darmanin, then a conservative UMP party deputy, wrote to the sports minister at the time, Valérie Fourneyron, to ban the wearing of the veil on football pitches in France, in response to Fifa's desire to authorize the veil.
Political statement
France's laws on secularism guarantee religious freedom to all citizens, and contain no provisions on banning the wearing of religious symbols in public spaces, with the exception of full-face coverings which were outlawed in 2010.
Many right-wing politicians in France want to widen restrictions on the headscarf, seeing it as a political statement in support of Islamism and an affront to French values.
In last year's presidential election, far-right leader Marine Le Pen proposed a ban on the headscarf in all public places, which experts said would almost certainly have been stuck down as unconstitutional if she had been elected.
The French Senate, which is dominated by the right-wing Republicans party, also tried to introduce a law in January last year that would have banned the wearing of obvious religious symbols in all competitive sports.
It was rejected in the lower house by President Emmanuel Macron's centrist ruling party.
(with AFP)
