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Basketball Muslim Players Pursue Hijab Dream

ISTANBUL – Pursuing their dream of being professional Basketball players, female Muslim players are still pushing the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) to lift the ban on hijab in international tournaments.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Indira Kaljo, a female Muslim basketball player, who believes the ban to be discriminatory towards athletes who want to follow their faith, including Sikhs and Jews, was quoted by World Bulletin on Thursday, July 21.

Kaljo finished her collegiate career at Tulane University in 2010 before playing professionally in Ireland and then in her native Bosnia.

Raised in a Muslim family, she did not decide to wear hijab until after her first season in Bosnia, at which point she learned about the FIBA rule.

Kaljo, 28, has not played professionally since then.

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“This is our passion, our dream. This is what we worked for since we were little kids,” she said.

With her basketball career on hold, Kaljo founded and now serves as president of Global Aktivne, a nonprofit organization based in Saudi Arabia that aims to empower women and girls through sports and other avenues.

In 2014, she launched an online petition, which collected some 70,000 signatures, attracting worldwide attention to the ban and, she says, influenced the International Basketball Federation, or FIBA, to soften its position on head scarves.

Indeed, in September 2014, FIBA announced that women would be permitted to wear religious head coverings in domestic basketball games for a two-year provisional period.

However, FIBA has yet to grant players the same latitude in international competition, saying it would consider the matter in a board meeting later this year.

As a result, when the women’s basketball tournament at the 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, next July 6 with 12 teams representing 12 countries, none of the players will be donning hijab.

Despite the presence of two Muslim-majority countries in the tournament (Turkey and Senegal), not one of the 144 players expected to compete in Rio will be wearing the traditional hijab headscarf on the court.

Still defending her right to don hijab, she currently continues her career in the Saudi team, which was established in 2006.

“I think Muslim women should be comfortable in their skin, whether they wear the hijab or not, covered or not covered,” said Kaljo.

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations.

In May 2014, a New York Muslim student has won a worthy fight after being granted the right to wrestle while wearing beard, a decision which overturned an earlier ban which denied him the chance to compete for a full season tournament.

FIFA’s International Football Association Board also allowed Muslims’ hijab and Sikh turbans earlier in 2014.

In June 2011, an Atlanta Muslim woman was allowed to compete in international weightlifting tournaments while donning hijab after the sport’s world governing body modified its rules to accommodate her Muslim beliefs.