FRANCE: Olympics show what’s wrong with French ‘laïcité’
Hijab is forbidden to Muslim French athletes, but the opening ceremony featured a drag queen parody of Jesus’s Last Supper that even the arch-moderate French Catholic Bishops protested.
By Massimo Introvigne
Bitter Winter (29.07.2024) – With the opening ceremony of the Olympics, France managed to offend its two main religions, Christianity and Islam. First, it was the French sprinter Sounkamba Sylla who was barred from taking part in the ceremony wearing a hijab. After international protests, she was allowed to cover her hair with a hat—but not a hijab, which France considers a religious symbol whose display violates its principle of strict secularism, or laïcité.
More generally, no French Muslim female athlete is allowed to compete in the Olympics with a hijab, despite recommendations to the contrary of the international sports federations. This has been protested by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International. Earlier this month, Amnesty published a report criticizing the French hijab ban. A representative of the human rights organization, Anna Błuś, said that the ban “shows Muslim women that when the French authorities talk about equality between men and women, they do not see them as women. They do not count them… These women have been demonized and vilified for years.”
The government’s objection is that French female athletes in the Olympics represent the country and all French citizens, and the hijab is a “divisive” symbol. A contradiction, however, emerged when the opening ceremony of the Olympics featured a tableau vivant that purported to be a reenactment of Jesus’ Last Supper as portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci, with Jesus and the apostles impersonated by drag queens, a transgender model, and a half-naked singer representing the Greek god Dionysus. Apart from any discussion about its artistic merits, the performance obviously offended Christians. Some tried to defend the performance by claiming that it did not represent the Last Supper but a Greek banquet of Dionysus. The late remedy was worse than the disease and the late excuse did not fool anybody (except some anti-cultists and other unconditional admirers of laïcité). It was “perceived” as the Last Supper immediately and internationally, and every undergraduate student of sociology would know that in these cases social effects are determined by social perceptions. The motivations of the coreographer are irrelevant.
Even the French Catholic Bishops Conference, which is known for trying to avoid conflicts with the government, issued a statement noting that “This ceremony has unfortunately included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity, which we very deeply deplore.” Others questioned the connection between the parody Last Supper and sport. And obviously the Russian propaganda of the Putin regime had a field day saturating social media in Muslim countries with attacks against the hijab ban and in Christian countries against the parody Last Supper, noting that such things would never happen in Russia.
I believe the incident(s) demand a deeper comment. In 2023, France passed a law against “separatism” and for the defense of its “Republican principles,” epitomized by laïcité. Normally, “laïcité” is translated as separation between church and state but it cannot be compared to its American counterpart. In fact, it is its opposite. As French sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger once wrote, in the U.S. separation protects religions from the state, in France it protects the state from religions.
But why according to the French authorities the hijab, which affirms Muslim identity, is divisive, while the Last Supper transgender parody, which offends Christian identity, is not? The answer is connected with the very essence of laïcité, an attitude of suspicion against religion and of promotion of laws and policies limiting its influence. Some minority religions are dismissed as “cults” (“sectes” in French) but religion in general is seen as a problem rather than as a resource, particularly when it demands a string commitment from its believers, asks them to surrender a part of their liberty to the religious organization, and takes political positions on issues such as abortion or same-sex marriages.
In this sense, prohibiting hijab and offering to the world a gay parody of Jesus’ Last Supper, are two sides of the same laïcité coin. How France approaches the Olympics affirms that its “Republican values” includes as an essential feature marginalizing and controlling religion, if necessary through slander and, as the Catholic Bishops said, “derision and mockery.”
Some French friends told me that sociology of religion has little to do with what happened. In fact, France received a lot of money for the Olympics from a famous fashion group, Louis Vuitton, who insisted all the French athletes should wear its uniforms without variations. Its luggage was on display in the opening extravaganza. The Vuitton group prides itself of its gender inclusiveness, although it is much more reserved when it comes to its relationship with China and human rights there.
The two explanations are not incompatible. France reaffirmed its laïcité—which, as I said once in public in France and am not afraid to repeat today, is not a typically French feature foreigners should respect, it is just both an intolerant ideology and a denial of basic human rights—and even managed to make some money in the process.
Sounkamba Sylla. From X.