The Egyptian women’s beach volleyball team criticised the host of the Olympics 2024 for banning hijab after competing in one of the fixtures in the tournament.
Egyptian representatives, Marwa Abdelhady and Doaa Elghobashy, were at the Paris Olympics wearing hijabs, long black sleeved shirts, and black ankle-length leggings in a women’s beach volleyball match against Spain, CNN reported.
However, if they had been playing for France, they would not have been allowed to observe hijabs.
France has banned its athletes from wearing any “ostensible religious symbols” while competing.
Speaking to CNN‘s Swedish affiliate, Expressen, Abdelhady criticised France for banning the hijab for French athletes.
Moreover, Elghobashy expressed disappointment at not giving the French athletes freedom to wear whatever they wanted.
“I want to play in my hijab, she wants to play in a bikini,” Expressen reported Elghobashy as saying. “Everything is OK, if you want to be naked or wear a hijab. Just respect all different cultures and religions,” she said.
“I don’t tell you to wear a hijab and you don’t tell me to wear a bikini. No one can tell me how to dress. It’s a free country, everyone should be allowed to do what they want,” she added.
Earlier in January 2022, the French senate cast their vote in favour of banning the wearing of hijab and other “ostensible religious symbols” in sports competitions.
Previously, in September, it was confirmed that this ban would also apply to French athletes competing in the Paris Olympics, when French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra said that the country would favour “a strict regime of secularism, applied rigorously in the field of sport.”
In this respect, Elghobashy initiated playing beach volleyball in modest attire.
The 26-year-old made her debut back in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro after the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) gave her last-minute permission to wear the head covering while playing.
Additionally, speaking in an interview with CNN Sport last year, the athlete said that “the hijab is part of me”.
