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Ban Should N Nasya Bahfen I:::: Lecturer, School of Media and I:::: Communication at RMIT University
Several years after ruling against the wearing of head-scarves by female football players, the sport's world gov-erning body FIFA finally lifted the hijab ban. In March 2012, the International Football Association Board (FIFA's rule-making arm), voted unanimously to allow the testing of specially designed head coverings for the four months. While this was a cause for celebration, the ban should never have been imposed in the first place. Ostensibly, it was about safety, with FIFA concerned that pins used to hold the scarves in place posed a hazard to the play¬ers. Not everyone accepted that safety was the reason for the ban, with some suggesting that it was part of a rising global tide of anti-Muslim sentiment. As I explained to a colleague at ABC Radio Australia, my initial reaction to the ban was to wonder exactly how my pin-free headscarf posed a safety threat to me or an¬yone else, whether on a football field or in a swimming pool. How was it possible, I wondered, that FIFA didn't know about the existence of headscarves specifically for sport? If the custodians of the world game were truly con-cerned about whether the headscarves posed a safety hazard, all FIFA had to do was put the words "sports" and "hijab" into a search engine, or ask one of the thousands of women who play sports with a headscarf week in, week out. | ||
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