Muslim Women, Islamic Dress, and Olympic Sports
Wednesday August 18, 2004
Muslims compete at the Olympics just like anyone else, but the challenges for Muslims women can be especially difficult. How can they balance their desire to participate with their desire to maintain the strict dress codes they must usually follow?
Religioscope explains:
[I]n some conservative Muslim countries, sports are permissible only if strict guidelines on modesty are observed. For women, that means covering their bodies and hair. In a handful of countries like Iran, it even means prohibiting women from participating in sports unless there are no men nearby.
Breaking these customs has gotten at least one female Olympian into trouble. In 1992, Hassiba Boulmerka of Algeria was wearing contemporary running shorts when she won the 1,500-meter race. She was later denounced by critics at home for "running with naked legs in front of thousands of men." Still, would Boulmerka have won the gold if she had run the 1,500-meters dressed in traditional Islamic clothing? In most sports, Islamic robes and head scarves would make it impossible for an athlete to perform at her best.
Paris-based lawyer Linda Weil-Curiel is leading a campaign to force countries to include women in their Olympic delegations. The group, called Atlanta-Sydney-Athens Plus, started its campaign after the 1992 Olympics, when 35 countries -- half of them Muslim -- sent no women athletes.
Weil-Curiel says all-male delegations contravene the Olympic charter, which forbids all forms of discrimination. "Just like South Africa [was] banned [from the Olympics] for nearly 30 years because of its apartheid policy, we want the countries who do not allow women to participate to be excluded from the Games. They have to respect the rules of the Olympics, or they don't participate. Why should [the Olympics and other sports events] comply with religious requirements? We're talking about sports, not religion," Weil-Curiel said.
The calls for a boycott may be having an effect — in 2000 only 9 countries sent all-male delegations; this year, even fewer have done so. Will more international pressure like this force these countries to continue opening up?
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Comments
Id rather be covered up and know that people are watching me for my abilities, not for the way I look. More countries should encourage these things. Maybe then anorexia, bulimia, and other image-related diseases would be removed.
Is there any evidence that in countries where women are forced to be more covered up, they are more valued for their abilities than in countries where they are allowed to be less covered?
Austin Cline : They are valued for their abilities to stay away from other men and how many children they produce. And not at least how they obey their husband and master.
The way the Islam is applied and perceived is as an ideology, with very little spiritual guidance or moral grounds. Repeating the name of Allah does not make things holly. Everything that we get from our clerics is stern advices on what should wear, dress, respond, behave, and especially how to control our mother, sisters and wives, at home and outside home. Even in totally different climates we, the controlling men, are advised to imitate the clothing of Arabia. The intelligence is also the speed of adjustment, not only the reciting by heart the longest Surah. It was not proven that a long garment or day pajamas with under trousers and Italian restaurant table cloth or diapers on the head do make us more believers, more respected, more important or superior. Certainly, there are other grotesque clothing styles like rappers’ outfits or orthodox Jew’s garments, but we are not in competition with them, are we? The ridiculous costumes of Muslim women at the Olympics neither helped them to won gold medals nor convince the infidels of the superiority of Islam.
Only a sexually obsessed or quite impotent person would forbid women to wear what make them beautiful. Why a person with inferiority complex would extrapolate and even impose his thoughts and feelings to all Muslim people? Why should we be guilty for his libidinious thinking? I do think that the clerics, sheiks, mullahs should remain confined to the spiritual aspect of Muslim life—religion not ideology, we should forbid them to dare have opinions about our way of life, for simple reason that they have no expertise in any field: family, administration, law, sport, fashion, arts, and our life is not their business. Period!
Hear Hear! (For Weil-Curiel)