FIn March, the French Football Federation (FFF) issued a press release recalling the ban on stopping matches to allow Muslim players to break the Ramadan fast.
The origin of this position would not be to be found on the side of a request from players or professional clubs, but from information reported indicating that such interruptions would have occurred during amateur matches. To justify its decision, the Federation referred to its statutes, which set out a principle of “football neutrality”. She also pointed out, through her chairman of the Federal Referees Commission, that there is “a time to play sports, and a time to practice one’s religion”.
Virulent reactions
This position was quickly commented on and sometimes gave rise to virulent reactions, going so far as to make it, on the one hand, an example of supposed French Islamophobia and, on the other, of the entryism of religion. in soccer. It was also opposed to those of foreign federations which accepted these match interruptions.
If this precise context has its specificities, it is an exemplary case of situations and questions raised by religious facts in the workplace. Indeed, the arguments mobilized by the FFF are those that come up most often in the discourse of business leaders and managers, when they are confronted with the religious fact in their work situations. This is particularly true in sectors of activity such as sport, leisure or medico-social: the most frequent reflex is to refer to the principle of secularism, then to recall that religion should be reserved for the private domain or respondent.
On this point, it must be reiterated that secularism, in its aspect of religious neutrality, concerns the public sector and public action. In private organizations, whatever their legal form (companies, associations, etc.), it is the freedom of belief and to manifest one’s beliefs that takes precedence.
Legitimacy and proportionality
The organization can restrict it, but for specific reasons (for example, health or safety rules) and in specific circumstances: it cannot impose a general and unmotivated restriction of freedom on its employees by making neutrality compulsory nun. Two criteria therefore apply to any restriction: legitimacy and proportionality.
It must then be remembered that, at work, employees are people in all their dimensions. They are not simply skills, arms (legs for gamers!), calculation abilities or vista. They come to work as they are, without leaving their worries, their character, their imagination and, of course, their convictions at the door.
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