French Basketball Player Barred from Match for Wearing Hijab, Sparks Controversy

For the first time, Salimata Sylla, a point guard for the Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) basketball club, was excluded during a competition in northern France in early January. Before the start of the match, the referee informed her coach that the 25-year-old woman, who has been playing in the French Championship for over ten years, would not play because of the sports hijab she has been wearing for three years now, reports Le Parisien.

"I earn my place for this match, I get up on a Sunday to drive three hours to Escaudain (Hauts-de-France), I change and warm up with my teammates only to be excluded? When I have an approved headgear?", indignantly Salimata Sylla who felt "humiliated" and hurt. The club president, Sébastien Marie-Sainte, does not understand this decision. "Salimata, she’s the pillar of our team. She’s a very good player that we count on and she’s also an ambassador for the sport. There, we’re deprived of a role model for the youth," he laments.

It is true that the regulations of the French Basketball Federation (FFBB) have prohibited the wearing of the hijab for "three or four years", but the "witch hunt" really started in January, explains the president of the Aubervilliers club, who specifies that the situation experienced by Salimata, "Sali" for her friends, is not an "isolated case". This decision is simply "sickening" according to Romy, one of Sali’s teammates. "The wearing of the veil is a non-issue among us. We’re all here to play sports, not to look at each other," supports Muriella, another player.

Yet this rule is not applied by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), notes Salimata, who recalls that in a year, several foreign athletes will come to France to "participate with their headgear" in the Olympic and Paralympic Games "while at the same time, we exclude the French women who wear it". The young woman only wishes one thing: "to play basketball. And that other women and girls have this same opportunity. It’s serious to ask for that in 2023."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-4PNBJ8jkc