Decathlon cancels plans to sell sport headscarves in France

Sports retailer Decathlon on Tuesday cancelled plans to sell headscarves for Muslim female athletes in France after an outcry from politicians and what it said were threats.

The decision was taken "to ensure the safety and security of our own teams," Decathlon Head of Communications Xavier Rivoire told RTL radio.

The company had earlier written on Twitter that it had suffered an "unprecedented wave of insults and threats" over the product.

The French right has long sought to restrict the wearing of headscarf, which is already banned in schools.

Several French politicians called for a boycott of Decathlon products and Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said she would have preferred that a French company refrained from promoting the headscarf.

Lydia Guirous, spokeswoman for the center-right Les Republicains party, on Sunday accused Decathlon of submitting to "Islamism" by offering the product for sale on its French website.

Decathlon initially responded by saying that the headscarf was "a requirement of certain runners, and we are therefore responding to this sporting requirement."

But, she added, French secularism was not in danger from women "who wear the headscarf and have chosen to, whether in a sporting context or not."

President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party criticized the reaction aimed at Decathlon's decision to sell headscarves.

"This obsession with the headscarf and Islam, lodged in the republican unconscious, is a French exceptionalism that we could well do without," Aurelien Tache wrote on Twitter.