ever Have Been Imposed | ||
ever Have Been Imposed The impact of the ban was particularly vicious for Iran's national women's team, who were left crying on a foot¬ball pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman after a Bahraini FIFA official would not let them play in an Olympic quali¬fier against their hosts. Their punishment for refusing to take off their scarves in order to play in the match was the penalty of a win being recorded for their opponents, Jordan, and the crushing of their hopes of qualifying for the London Olympic Games that year. Three members of the Jordanian team were also affected, having to leave the ground because they too did not want to take off their headscarves. I was born in Jakarta - the crowded, sprawling metrop-olis of the world's largest Muslim majority country. It's a place where obsession with football crosses gender lines, where fans have an almost psychotic football rivalry with neighboring Malaysia, and where - unbelievably - the 90,OOO-seat Gelora Bung Karno sells out for a match fea-turing the national youth team. To ban women from attend-ing football matches in Indonesia would be unfathomable. With football the most popular team sport on earth, and the numbers of players and fans particularly prevalent in Muslim majority countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, lifting the ban would seem to be - as Nelsen describes - a no-brainer. Political science professor Curtis Ryan says lifting the ban will "allow women to choose for themselves, rather than have FIFA choose for them". If FIFA truly wants to promote the "world game", it's time for them to stop alienating the female, Muslim part of that world. 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 players. 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. | ||
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