By The 2023 winter edition of Dazed Digital Magazine featured Muslim schoolgirls and female athletes in a fight against the secular dress code in France within schools and sporting events. The cover spotlights three Muslim women dressed in colorful abayas resembling the French flag. From left to right is Loubna Reguig wearing blue, Salimata Sylla wearing white, and Hiba Latreche wearing red.
The article critiques France’s self-acclaimed identity as a secular government while questioning the political integrity of rulings and laws made against abayas and hijabs in public schools and sporting events. Tiara Attaii, the writer of the original Dazed Digital feature, details personal stories of countless women who reject France’s “fight against bodily autonomy.”
Aisha, a schoolgirl, wore a long flowy abaya to class on Sept. 5, 2023 — a week after the French Minister of Education and Youth released a statement that the abaya is banned in schools. She was called to the Chief Educational Advisor’s office where she was told to “assimilate” by taking off her abaya, despite it being sleeveless.
The story continues onto the basketball court, as Aubervilliers’ Salimata Sylla was unable to play without removing her hijab. Her refusal cost her the game, her job, and her “social network.” The French Sports Minister, months after Salimata’s case, announced that hijab would be banned in the 2024 Olympics held in France. Following Salimata’s experience on the court, she has since begun Ball.Her, an all-female sports club created so women could play freely without risk of exclusion.
We’re educated, we’re working in different sectors, and we don’t want to make ourselves invisible anymore. We’re not going to say yes to everything.
Ania Tayri, founder of Concentré de Talents
Sihem Zine, Founder of Action Droits des Musulmans (ADM) — an organization created to protect Muslims’ rights — stood in front of an all-male court to speak out against the abaya ban. Zine was met with what appeared to be the “banning of modest clothing altogether” as clothing can become illegal depending on the “behaviour of the student.”
It is worth noting that France first approved the law “separating church and state” in 1905, but it was only in 2004 that France defined secularism as “neutrality” in all state institutions. As such, any “non-discrete” symbols of religion, such as headscarves, Jewish kippahs, and the sign of the cross, are prohibited.
In June 2023, the Conseil d’État responded to an objection to the hijab ban from Les Hijabeuses — a soccer collective that advocates for the right to wear hijab in sports. As such, the Conseil d’État viewed the French Football Federation’s ban on hijab as “sustainable and proportionate.”
Nonetheless, Muslim women continue to advocate for the inclusion of veiled, Muslim women in public spaces. “We’re educated, we’re working in different sectors, and we don’t want to make ourselves invisible anymore. We’re not going to say yes to everything,” says Ania Tayri, founder of Concentré de Talents, an agency that aids ethnic youth living in France in breaking ground into academic and professional spaces.
“All credit is due to the Muslim women and girls who have chosen to stake their own claim to Frenchness, refusing for it to be singularly defined by the white, predominantly Catholic model,” writes Tiara Attaii.
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