Posted By Curtis R. Ryan Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:19 AM
FIFA, the international federation for world soccer, is
poised to make a decision in a few days that will impact the lives of hundreds
of thousands of young Muslim women -- whether or not to overturn the current
ban on the hijab, or headscarf.
Matters actually came to a head last summer, in June 2011, when the entire
Iranian women's soccer team was prevented from playing in Olympic qualifying
matches held in Jordan. The ouster of an entire national team, minutes before a
key international match, led to a resurgent global debate on the relations
between the hijab, sports, and international politics. Today, however, the
winds of change seem to be blowing back in the other direction, as activists,
athletes, and allies -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- appear to have met every FIFA
objection and will arrive at the March 3 London meeting of the International
Football Association Board (IFAB) with a proposal to lift the ban and allow
thousands of women an opportunity that is blocked under current rules.
Posted By Ahmed Ali Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - 4:12 PM
If you were watching Iraq's
government-sponsored satellite channel Al-Iraqiyah Sports yesterday between 9
p.m. and 12 a.m. Baghdad time you would not have known that the whole country
had just endured its bloodiest day in over a year. Earlier in the day,
spectacular attacks killed and injured over 300 people. But as soon as Ramadan's
daily fast was broken, over 50,000 spectators packed into Baghdad's most
prominent stadium, Al-Sha'ab, to watch the Baghdad-based Al-Zawraa club (dubbed
the White Seagulls because of their white jerseys) take on the Arbil-based
Arbil Club (known as the yellow Citadel given the colors of their jerseys and
the presence of the historical citadel in downtown Arbil) in the championship
game of a long soccer season.
The most obvious conclusion one might come to at the end of
the evening is that Iraqis are resilient and attacks are not going to deter
them from carrying on with their daily lives. That is apparent in the actions
of the soccer federation that did not cancel the game despite the attraction it
could provide to insurgents as a target and the fans who were, ironically,
bothered by the heavy security presence at the stadium. However, in a more
subtle manner, it was evident how the game mirrored the country's political and
social situation -- divided, hotly contested, and with deeply unclear
significance.
Posted By David Goldblatt Friday, December 3, 2010 - 6:52 PM
View a slide show of Qataris celebrating getting the World Cup
For much of the last three years, Qatar
has been an outsider in the contest to host the 2022 World Cup. In the closing
stages of the race, British bookmakers slashed their odds and made it the favorite.
Someone somewhere knew something, and they were right. Qatar, a small Persian Gulf country of just 1.7 million
people, will be hosting football's top tournament 12 years hence. This is an intriguing and important
moment, for 2022 will be the first global sporting mega-event to be held in an
Arabic-speaking or predominately Muslim country. In an era of globalization, this is no sideshow, but the most watched event on the planet. Cumulative viewing figures for
each of the last few World Cups exceeded 25 billion. Moreover, football -- or soccer, for you Yanks -- is
incredibly popular in the region, played and watched more than any other sport.
Posted By Laura Kasinof Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - 9:16 PM
SANAA,
Yemen
International sporting events can be a great way for a country to
rehabilitate its image. For two weeks in 2008, for instance, the world
focused
not on China's treatment of Tibet or economic policies, but on its
stunning Olympic
facilities and the spirit of apolitical international competition. This
summer, South Africa used the World Cup to put forward an image of an
emerging
"rainbow nation" unencumbered by racial tension or poverty. But
compared with
Yemen, which plans to host the Middle East's largest soccer tournament
later this November, those countries had it easy.
The
international media generally only focuses on Yemen when it emerges as the
source of an international terrorist plot, as it did in October after a failed attempt
to send explosives in packages to the United States was traced back to the
unstable Middle Eastern country and after the failed underwear bomber plot of
last Christmas. But even when the world is not watching, shootouts at police checkpoints, attacks on oil
pipelines, and assassinations of government officials are regular occurrences
in Yemen's southeastern region, where the central government's control runs
thin.
Posted By James Montague Friday, June 11, 2010 - 9:37 AM
Hosni Mubarak isn't a man usually accustomed to defeat. TheEgyptian president, after all, has been in charge for more than 30 years, outflanking regional and global rivals with consummate ease. Even Egypt's electoral process offers him scant chance of coming second: He romped home during the 2005 elections with almost 90 percent of the vote.
Yet as Mubarak sat in his residence watching last November's World Cup play-off between Egypt and Algeria--which was being played in neutral Sudan--that unusual sinking feeling would have come across him as Antar Yahia's thunderbolt sent the Desert Foxes to their first finals since 1986 and the Pharaohs, the African champions no less, home empty-handed.
As pictures beamed back of wild Algerian celebrations, Egyptian TV was flooded with calls from Egyptian fans claiming to have been attacked by knife-wielding Algerians. "Damn the so-called Arab unity, we should no longer talk about it," an angry Ibrahim Hegazi said on his NileSport show. "We should review our situations. We can no longer bear such incidents."
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