As the Olympics kick off this week, RFI’s Paul Marshall wrote an article for Religion Unplugged on France’s decision to bar its athletes from wearing a hijab while taking part in the Olympics and its broader policies on sports and religion. Marshall explains how these policies “violate international human rights standards and needlessly alienate Muslims,” worsening tensions instead of providing an “opportunity to use sports as a means of wholesome integration.” Ultimately, he argues, France’s “current radical secularity is both unjust and exacerbates the very problems it is intended it solve.” He writes:

Sadly, France has barred its athletes from wearing a hijab while taking part in the Paris-based Olympic and Para-Olympic games. In so doing it continues its radical campaign to ban religion from anything other than the most private matters.

This ban does not apply to athletes from other countries, and many women participants from the Muslim world will have still their heads covered, even though their own country, unlike France, might not require it.

But France in an authoritarian manner still regards its athletes as necessarily surrogates of the state who must, therefore, abide by the country’s highly restrictive version of secularism, laïcité.

This follows on from France’s refusal, unlike the United States, Germany, England, the Netherlands, and most other countries, to accommodate Muslim soccer players during the month of Ramadan, which this year took place from March to April.

Read the full article: “France’s Olympic Hijab Ban Violates International Law And Exacerbates Tensions.”