A hijab by Decathlon: France’s problem with visible symbols of Muslim faith
Tags: Hijab, Womens Rights, Politics, Muslim, France

Decathlon briefly posted a Kalenji hijab for sale on its website

En français

After the “burkini” ban controversy, France is yet again divided on the question of Muslim veils: this debate revolves around a sports hijab for sale at Decathlon, the go-to sports store for the entire country. The brand has since promptly removed its offer due to the amount of backlash and threats it received from the French public. A Twitter analysis using NexaIntelligence gave us insight into the situation.

U.S. fencing champion Ibtihaj Muhammad in Nike’s sports hijab ad

A majority of videos among top shared links

The most shared link was a picture of Nike’s ad for a sports hijab, worn by the American sabre fencing champion Ibtihaj Muhammad. The tweet’s author writes “Let me tell you, in New York and the US they don’t give a damn, debates over the Hijab and Decathlon are far away”, but comments range from criticisms of the U.S. over President Trump’s behavior to arguing there is no comparison to be made between the two countries.

The 2nd and 3rd top links were shared by Damien Rieu, an outspoken right-wing activist who notably led civilian groups to stop asylum-seekers in France then bring them to the police. He tweeted videos of Franck Allisio, local representative of the Rassemblement National, France’s extreme-right party, telling journalist Nadiya Lazzouni (who wears a headscarf) that women who want to wear the veil should return to countries where that is acceptable because wearing it in France goes against the country’s culture.

The 4th most shared link showed another side of the French political spectrum, with a video of political scientist Clément Viktorovitch arguing that the notion of laïcité means freedom to wear whatever one wishes, so it does not in fact prevent women from wearing the hijab. Laïcité is the principle of separation of state and church; it is meant to stop religious involvement in public matters and as such, forbids wearing religious symbols in the public sphere (when attending school or working for the government for instance). In theory, it guarantees the equal consideration and treatment of citizens by the state, no matter what their religion is.

French people disagree on the practical ways in which this principle — which has been enshrined in the law since 1905 — should apply to modern society given that multiple religions coexist in the country. At the heart of this debate are the different connotations given to women’s veils, the most common argument against them being that they symbolise women’s subservience to men and a patriarchal order that people believe to be absent in non-Muslim contemporary France. Whether women who do not wear the veil truly enjoy the freedoms and equal treatment boasted by critics of the veil is rarely considered.

After these videos came a tweet by renowned contemporary philosopher Raphaël Enthoven, in which he contends that defending freedom should mean defending both the freedom to wear a hijab and the freedom to mock or caricature Prophet Muhammad (or any other religious figure). Anyone who defends one but not the other, he says, is essentially a hypocrite. Enthoven references the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, whose offices were attacked by terrorists in 2015 in response to a caricature of the Prophet published by their paper. In essence, these are two of the extreme positions one finds in France on the topic of Islam: those who believe it should be treated as all other religions, which includes the freedom to mock it, as well as those who think Islam doesn’t belong in France in the first place and that people should not exhibit signs of faith in public.

Next came Claude Askolovitch’s essay for Slate.fr titled “When the hijab becomes cool, the bourgeoisie goes crazy”, in which the journalist laments the hypocrisy of those who say they defend freedom to then denigrate women’s choice to wear the hijab. He concludes, “we feel, within ourselves, that we formerly possessed reason, but are now insane”.

Finally, yet lower on the list of shared links, is an article from Le Monde depicting Decathlon’s decision to cancel sales of the sports hijab from its stores in France following death threats and an overwhelming amount of disapproval from French politicians including non-Muslim women.

Looking at top content, it seems that opponents to the sports hijab are quite outspoken and popular online, but proponents of the freedom to wear what you wish are just as present and represent a more diverse part of the population. Muslims and non-muslims alike have garnered attention on Twitter with tweets and inventive hashtags criticizing the outcome of this hijab sale debate. Within the top 20 hashtags, we find #liberté (freedom) in 3rd position, #peace (5th), #pourmessoeurssportives (for my athletic sisters) in 10th position. Ranked 15th, however, is #decathlonafondlobscurantisme, meaning Decathlon supports (religious) obscurantism.

NexaIntelligence made it infinitely easier for us to sift through all the Twitter data one gets when searching for “hijab” and “Decathlon”, by giving us a digestible synthesis of the content that matters. By looking at top shared links we found that people were tuned in to French news television and sharing video excerpts to prove their point or show allegiance to particular politicians and commentators. The ranking of hashtags gave us insight into a different portion of the debate and to answer the question: who uses which words to say what? In this particular case, interesting hashtags were made up by users, clearly signaling their take on the subject. We will now delve further into the different sub-conversations at the heart of this debate.

Lexical map: discovering conversations surrounding the hijab and Decathlon

The lexical map helped us discover sub-conversations happening around the Decathlon hijab debate. The map is built using co-word association and measuring the frequency to which words are used alone and together.

Captured by NexaIntelligence (click to zoom in)

We found several additional interesting points when perusing the clusters. Some people pointed to the absurdity of the polemic considering that Nike has been selling sports hijabs since 2017, others noted that Marlène Schiappa, Secretary of Equality between women and men, has not yet expressed her opinion on the matter in public.

The orange cluster points to an ongoing conversation about France’s lack of tolerance for anything that pushes against the norm: debates over a male highschool student who was chastised for wearing makeup and high heels to school, and the sports hijab controversy are cited together as proof that French society refuses to move forward and relinquish beliefs descending from Catholicism. See some tweets here and here.

A tweet by Deputy Aurore Bergé (En Marche) drew attention from both sides of the debate, showing how polarized French society is on the question of the veil. Bergé, a non-Muslim woman, argues that sports are a means of emancipation, not submission, which she says the veil symbolizes. In her opinion, Decathlon is significantly breaking away from French values when offering hijabs for sale.

In his response to Ms. Bergé, @marcomaximo020 further explains the ideological contradictions between French representatives: democrats find it great that veiled women will be able to run while republicans like Bergé think it is a heresy to normalize the sale of religious (Muslim) clothing.

Yet another female politician, this time from the extreme-right party Rassemblement National, denounced Decathlon’s choice and called their cancellation of the sale a victory. Isabelle Surply goes as far as to mention terrorism and jihadists in the same tweet celebrating Decathlon’s final decision.

Another French woman, copywriter Cécile Pimont turns the argument on its head by qualifying the threats against Decathlon of terrorist.

Finally, several clusters pointed to Yann Amiry, Community Manager at Decathlon, whose Twitter account blew up after he handled the company’s public responses to online threats. Amiry said he woke up to 12,000 new followers and thousands of notifications and messages.

Users wrote to thank him for his work and praise his handling of the situation, and some, like @AdrienChirac included a joke about the possibility of shipping one of those sports hijabs to his sister who runs marathons. Amiry even went on to be interviewed by the French media.

We also looked at a tweet by France Inter radio host Guillaume Meurice, which caught the public’s attention. In the linked video, Meurice and his colleagues listen to recordings of people’s outrage over the sports hijab and mock one fellow citizen’s failure to define laïcité despite claiming he believes in it.

Driven by a decisively French penchant for arguments, the Decathlon hijab controversy is yet another manifestation of the country’s polarization over the presence of Muslim religious symbols in the public sphere. On Twitter, we find a divided public opinion with a visible majority of outspoken members of the extreme-right clashing with the smaller number of vocal proponents of the freedom to wear whatever one wishes. This latest debate over women’s veils fits within the context of previous controversies over the “burkini” and the extent to which women can cover themselves in order to be identifiable in official contexts. As such, it’s essential to look at it as an episode in a longer series of arguments over the same topic.

NexaIntelligence helped us delve deeper into each side of the debate so we could, for instance, comprehend the nuances of opposition to the sports hijab and identify influencers of public opinion. It allowed us to find the key politicians, journalists, and philosophers commenting on the matter and to see which of their tweets attracted more attention. Most importantly, we were able to get a broad picture of the debate, then (figuratively) zoom in on the aspects we judged interesting and worth exploring further in depth.

What surprised us in Twitter conversations was how this essentially religious question was brought on par with that of a teenage boy wearing makeup to school, and to see the words islamophobia and homophobia being used not in opposition to one another, but as representing two equally wrong traits of contemporary French society. This seems to suggest that citizens critical of the French status quo are starting to consider intolerance towards non-normative behaviors as a flaw in the system, something to be corrected because it prevents France from truly being the “country of human rights”.

Related readings

Libération gives french muslim women a platform to expose their daily struggles in France.