Indeed,
it’s not as though women’s teams of Muslim-majority countries don’t compete in
regular tournaments or that they always follow the dress codes prescribed by
the orthodox maulvis. The Pakistani women’s teams in different sports
are a good case in point in this regard, since their attires are no different
from those of the female sports teams of countries where Muslims are not in
majority (though a petition had been made to the High Court of the Pakistani
province of Sindh to the effect that women’s cricket and hockey matches were
repugnant to Islam, but it was dismissed). Also, the 2012 Women’s Squash World
Cup was won by Egypt, another Muslim-majority country, and Malaysia, yet another
Muslim-majority country, secured the third place. Also in this list of
accomplished Muslim women is ten-year-old Alzain Tareq from Bahrain, who in
2015 became the youngest ever competitor at the world swimming championship in
Kazan, Russia. Nor is sport for women something new to Islamic history per se,
as is clear from the references to Razia Sultan and Nur Jahan in the Indian
context in this book, for example.
There
are also Muslim women like Behnaz Shafiei, who has been defying all laws of
state and religion by riding her motorcycle on the streets of Iran, a country
that prohibits women riders altogether (though it allows women to drive cars,
unlike Saudi Arabia). But she is not the only one fighting for the rights of
women to ride two-wheelers, groups of females in Dubai and Egypt, called Women of Harley Dubai Chapter and Girls Go Wheels have also taken this
fight to the streets by getting together and asserting their freedom for
riding. Their attempts are aimed not only at their own liberation, but that of
many future generations so that women are encouraged to follow their paths
without any worries about societal constraints.
An
interesting development that can be examined in the context of clothing is that
of the Iranian women’s football team being disallowed by FIFA to play an
Olympic qualifier against in 2011 because of the dress code not conforming to
FIFA regulations. It is noteworthy that Jordan too is an Islamic state which
happens to be located in the Middle East but their players’ dress code wasn’t
found objectionable, reiterating that making sweeping generalizations about
women’s sports in the very diverse Islamic world would also not be appropriate.
The
Kazakh player Zarina Diyas is another example. In 2015, she held Sharapova for
a long while before giving away eventually. But the most important aspect of
this is the way in which her mother encouraged her to play tennis. She
accompanies her to the grounds and cheers for her too. Kazakhstan is a
Muslim-majority country and there has been no resistance to Zarina playing her
game the way she wants to.
Having
said that, we may turn our attention to Saudi Arabia, a country the regime of
which is the most conservative and oppressive towards women, other than
Taliban/ISIS-like militias. Here, the issue is not only one of clothing. It is
a country where girls are banned from sports in state schools (though it’s not
so in private schools) and powerful clerics castigate women for exercising and
female gyms must adhere to strict regulations, parading as health centres than
as venues of sports.
The
stance of the official Supreme Council of Religious Scholars is represented by
Sheikh Abdullah al-Maneea, who said in 2009 that the excessive “movement and
jumping” needed in football and basketball might cause girls to tear their
hymens and lose their virginity. Newspaper articles refer to such women as
“shameless” when they play sports and are a cause of great embarrassment for
the women and their families. Some women have even received text messages
advising them to stay at home and tend to their household duties as mothers and
wives. In 2010, Sheikh Abdulkareem al-Khudair, who also sits on the Supreme
Council for Religious Scholars, renewed a religious edict banning sports for
women, which he said “will lead to following in the footsteps of the devil”!
However,
it would be unfair to not give the other side of the picture in the very same
country. Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of the late King
Abdullah, who is known to be a supporter of women's rights, has included women
in his Kingdom Equestrian Team, part of his company Kingdom Holding, which has
allowed Saudi women to compete in international competitions since 2007. There
are liberal Saudi men who consider the women participating in sports to be
pioneers and encourage the women to play regardless of the obstacles.
Saudi women have formed teams, like the basketball team Jeddah United,
and a group of Saudi women led by Princess Reema al-Saud also organized a
hiking expedition to Everest base camp this summer as part of a charity
fundraising exercise to promote a healthy lifestyle for breast cancer patients.
While Human Rights Watch had slammed Saudi Arabia for not sending a single
female athlete in the Olympics, the National Olympic Committee of Saudi Arabia
has indicated to Human Rights Watch that it may send female sportspersons from
hereafter, and in 2012, the International Olympic Committee made it compulsory
for every participating country to send a women’s contingent, leading Saudi
Arabia to send two girls in its contingent to compete in judo and the 800 m.
run, fulfilling the indication it had made to Human Rights Watch.
If we
look at other countries in the Arab region, there have been some very positive
examples which give hope to future generations of women sportspersons. One of
them is Kuwaiti Line umpire, Aseel Shaheen, who in July 2015 became the first
From Palestine, a woman is making history in the sporting world. Noor Daoud,
who was the first Palestinian woman in history to compete in an international
motorsport event in 2013, taking part in drift racing, one of the most
dangerous disciplines in motorsports. Daood is not alone in this gender defying
movement in Palestine; she is in fact part of a group of Palestinian women
racers, coming from different cities and socio-economic backgrounds, who have
become role models for speed enthusiasts of West Bank under their collective
identity of Speed Sisters, which is also the title of a feature length
documentary made on them by Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares. With a lot of
creativity and makeshift logistics, these women maintain their passion for
racing amidst shortage of funds, societal and religious naysayers and border
tensions in Ramallah.
As for
the Taliban (be it the Afghan one or the Pakistani one) and its attitude
towards women, the less said the better. Though it no longer holds its sway
over most of Afghanistan, a new Taliban (different from its Afghan counterpart
but ideologically similar) has emerged in Pakistan. Maria Toor, an ace female
squash player from Pakistan who has made a mark on the international stage
doing her country proud, actually chopped her hair to disguise her female
identity while playing with boys in a Taliban-infested region, and her father
actually shifted the family from there to Peshawar for the sake of his
daughter’s sports career, a testimony to his gender-sensitized outlook.
The
Islami Jamaat-e-Talba (IJT) and the Punjab Students’ Association (PSA) clashed
in Karachi in October, 2015 clashed over what seems to be the issue of boys and
girls playing cricket together. The IJT and PSA students engaged in a fight
that injured both male and female members of the PSA. The IJT claimed that the
fight was part of propaganda of the PSA to malign the IJT. The claim of the PSA
is, however that the IJT had warned the female players to not play cricket in
the Karachi University campus.
In the capital city of Kabul, a group of Afghan women are
pioneering a revival of sports for women in a country that is still reeling
from the after effects of being ruled by Taliban for years. From being
virtually banned from public life and denied many basic human rights under the
Taliban regime, the members of Afghanistan’s National Cycling team is trying to
peddle forward in the right direction while tackling many roadblocks like
family pressure and patchy public support.
Thus, despite the challenges, sporty Muslim girls are racing along, fighting the obstacles. More power to them!
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