Asma Elbadawi: Challenging inequalities and ending the hijab ban

Apr 05, 2020, 10:01 AM

Alasdair Hooper hosts this SportSpiel feature interview with basketball player, poet and campaigner Asma Elbadawi.

From a very young age, Asma has always been someone to highlight any inequalities she saw. As it says in her Twitter bio, reframing stereotypes is part of who she is.

To many people she is the person who successfully campaigned for the International Basketball Federation to allow the hijab.

As she says in this episode, she never wanted someone younger than her to say they couldn’t compete in the sport because they weren’t allowed to wear the hijab.

If you take it back even further, to when Asma was younger, she never saw women – specifically muslim women – in sport. The restrictions in place were a large part of the reason as to why that was the case.

It takes a lot for someone to recognise those issues in the first place but it also takes a lot for someone to make a move and change them.

That’s what Asma Elbadawi did - she fought for, and made, those changes.

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Credits

A special thank you to The Mintridge Foundation for helping us secure this interview

Music: Otis McDonald