Source: Main Street Preps
By Allie Cohen
As a woman, I am no stranger to making compromises. It is a concept that I am continually learning to define in my terms. This is an ongoing process, but there are a few things that I will not compromise on – one of them being my freedom to practice my religion as I wish. While I have this luxury, others are forced to choose between their religion and passions, namely sports.
For years now, sports federations have implemented policies that ban hijabs from being worn on the field, causing a unique challenge for Muslim women. Although some have reversed universal bans of religious head coverings, Muslim women face hostile environments on all levels in sports, prompting the questions: how exclusive are sports federations’ uniform policies today? And how have these policies affected Muslim participation in sports?
The Trickle-Down Fight
During this year’s Olympics, we saw one of the most highly regarded sports federations in the world believe it had the right to police athletes on their uniforms even though their uniforms posed no threat to the public or gave the respective athletes an advantage. This indicates that other sports federations are likely exercising discriminatory uniform policies; namely, FIFA. In 2007, Canadian athlete Asmahan Mansour was forcefully removed from a football tournament after a referee told her she could not play if she wore her hijab. Subsequently, this was brought to the attention of the Canadian Soccer Association and FIFA, who both upheld the referee’s decision on the basis that the hijab could be dangerous despite “no empirical data or evidence on file that a hijab could strangle a player or injure an opponent.” After several years of FIFA going back and forth between baseless reasons for banning the hijab —“religious symbolism” to “health and safety” concerns — this issue finally came to the forefront in 2012. Specifically, Iran’s woman’s football team was banned from playing because of their religious attire, despite wearing hijabs that complied with FIFA standards. Although discouraging and heartbreaking (I am surmising this), this did not stop the team from doing what women always do, remedying a problem for women created by men by leading campaigns and finding ways to produce hijabs that undeniably followed the safety recommendation from the International Football Association Board. Ultimately, because of these tremendous efforts, in 2014, FIFA announced that they would permit religious head coverings, including turbans and kippahs, on the field.
Despite such strides, the battle for inclusivity does not stop at the professional level. Last year, a referee told a 14-year-old volleyball player, Najah Aqeel, that she could not play in her high school volleyball match because of her hijab. The referee’s reason: the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) “requires state permission for a student to wear a hijab” because they only allow “hair devices made of soft material and no more than three inches wide. Although “sad and upset and angry,” Aqeel understood that her situation was not unique. With this in mind, Aqeel appealed to local organizations and the American Muslim Advisory Council to amend this rule. Following the tireless efforts of Sabina Mohyuddin, the executive director of the American Muslim Advisory Council, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, in December, the state association “issued a rule change for all athletes across Tennessee” for religious headwear; “and in January, the national federation’s volleyball rules committee voted to adopt the rule change for volleyball players across the country.”
What Sports Looks Like For Muslim Women Today
Although Najah Aqeel’s story ultimately ended in a victory, high school players in different sports across the country are still forced to choose between their religion and sports – such as athletes, Noor Alexandra Abukaram, a 16-year-old who was disqualified from her Ohio cross-country race for wearing a hijab, and Amaiya Zafar, a 16-year-old boxer who was also disqualified from the 2016 Sugar Bert Boxing National Championships as a result of wearing her hijab, and a shirt and leggings for modesty. While the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) ultimately changed its rules, their defense for requiring waivers, which one of their lawyers stated that they were “not written with the intention of discriminating against anyone,” but rather “so as to not burden game officials with ‘a multitude of ad hoc decisions about what is or is not permitted, a completely unworkable situation that would lead to arbitrary distinctions,’” suggests that the “burden,” which sounds more like an inconvenience that could easily be fixed by simply getting rid of these rules, of referees is more important to these national sports associations and federations than violating one of the most basic civil rights granted to all citizens of America.
This is seen in the international and professional landscape. While Muslim women have had several victories against the Olympics’ discriminatory rules in the past decade, such as at the 2016 Rio Olympics, they are already facing new threats for the upcoming Olympics in 2024. Specifically, the International League for Women’s Rights, a French Feminist Group, has made calls to ban “the hijab and other items of Islamic clothing” during the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, so “female Muslim athletes can compete free from religious restrictions.” This on top of the fact that France is already extremely hostile against Muslims, as seen in their Islamophobic policies, has given reason for serious concern for Muslim athletes again about whether or not they will be able to compete while practicing their religion freely. Furthermore, although Muslim women have been successful in changing individual organizations’ rules, the international and professional landscape still has Islamophobic sentiments, calling for a need for future policy revisions across all levels of sports. Otherwise, as Sabina Mohyuddin so artfully said, keeping these religious barriers to playing sports would be “akin to telling Muslim girls that they need permission to be a Muslim.”
