A girls’s soccer collective in France that had been combating to overturn a ban on gamers from sporting the Muslim scarf made authorized progress of their judicial wrestle on Monday.
Under its present guidelines, the French Football Federation forbids all gamers, even amateurs, from sporting “ostentatious” spiritual symbols within the title of French secularism, stopping gamers from sporting Muslim headscarves or the Jewish kippa.
A Muslim girls’s collective generally known as “the Hijabeuses” launched a authorized problem to the foundations in November 2021, claiming they had been discriminatory and infringed on their proper to apply their faith freely.
The case reached the French constitutional council on Monday the place the general public rapporteur, whose views are usually adopted by the nine-member council, mentioned he was towards the federation’s guidelines and advisable a rule change.
Clement Malverti mentioned there was no “neutrality requirement” for soccer gamers who shouldn’t be subjected to the identical guidelines as public officers reminiscent of lecturers or civil servants who’re banned from displaying their spiritual convictions.
Football was “riddled with” spiritual symbols, he mentioned, together with a cross on the shirts of the skilled Auxerre workforce, gamers making the signal of the cross as they enter the pitch, or having tattoos that includes spiritual symbols.
A veil ban might be thought-about for nationwide gamers who represented the nation and had been enterprise a “public service mission,” he added.
The council is ready at hand down a call in three weeks’ time.
A lawyer for the Hijabeuses, Marion Ogier, mentioned it was “too early to cry victory,” however mentioned that the conclusions of the general public rapporteur “are in our favor.”
“Our combat is not political, not religious. It is about sport and only sport,” Foune Diawara, head of the Hijabeuses, instructed reporters. “There are women who are excluded from football pitches every weekend because they wear the veil.”
France’s legal guidelines on secularism assure spiritual freedom to all residents and include no provisions on banning the sporting of spiritual symbols in public areas, except for full-face coverings which had been outlawed in 2010.
Many right-wing politicians in France wish to widen restrictions on the scarf, seeing it as a political assertion in assist of Islamism and an affront to French values.
In final yr’s presidential election, far-right chief Marine Le Pen proposed a ban on the scarf in all public locations, which consultants mentioned would virtually definitely have been struck down as unconstitutional if she had been elected.
The French Senate, which is dominated by the right-wing Republican social gathering, additionally tried to introduce a regulation in January final yr that will have banned the sporting of apparent spiritual symbols in all aggressive sports activities.
It was rejected within the decrease home by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist ruling social gathering.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
