Ahead of Paris 2024, France’s secularism rule is forcing female Muslim basketball players to choose between faith and the game.
Paris, France – Diaba Konate was a rising star in French basketball.
Called up by the French Federation of Basketball (FFBB) at 17, she went on to play in the national youth teams in three major tournaments, reaching the finals of the U18 European Championship and the Youth Olympic Games in 2018, and winning a gold medal at the 2019 World Beach Games.
At the time, the sky was the limit.
She moved to the United States on a full scholarship to play with UC Irvine, surpassing 1,000 points in her collegiate career after scoring a season-high 20 against UC Santa Barbara in February 2023.
Now 24, Konate dreams of playing for France again, but it has become a trickier proposition.
What’s stopping Konate from another national call-up isn’t her potential – it’s that two years ago, she started wearing a hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women to cover the hair and neck.
“I never thought it would be a big hindrance”, Konate told media, recalling how little changed when she started wearing it in the US at 22.
But when she wanted to play in a tournament in France that summer, match organisers told her she could only do it if she took off her hijab.
She felt “humiliated”, and later discovered that this was part of new FFBB regulations that forbid players from wearing “any equipment with a religious or political connotation”.
Konate felt “abandoned” by the FFBB and by many of her former national coaches, who never contacted her after Article 9.3 banning headscarves was implemented in December 2022.
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