Conservative Christians and Muslims campaign against Muslim women’s soccer headdress
By James M. Dorsey
Proponents of allowing observant Muslim female soccer
players to wear a head dress and anti-autocratic protesters in the Middle East
and North Africa are running up against similar conservative attempts to roll
back their achievements. Ironically, they are both confronting alliances that
at times cut across confessional boundaries.
While the battle to secure the goals of successful protests
in post-revolt Egypt, Tunisia and Libya has largely moved from the street to
the polling station and backroom horse trading, the campaign for a woman’s head
dress on the pitch that meets security and safety standards is being waged in
the secretive board rooms of authorities that govern association soccer.
While protesters in the Middle East and North Africa have
learnt the hard way that toppling an autocrat is but the first step to ensuring
greater freedom and social justice, pro-head dress campaigners are discovering
that tentative board decisions are no more than tentative and open to challenge.
That is even truer given world soccer body FIFA’s lack of transparency and
accountability and its failure at times to avoid conflicts of interest.
FIFA Executive Committee member, medical doctor and head of the
soccer body’s medical committee Michel D’Hooghe, in the latest twist in the
campaign for observant Muslim female soccer player’s rights, has thrown into
doubt a decision last March by the International Football Association Board
(IFAB) that sets the rules for association soccer to temporarily allow the
wearing of a head dress that meets safety and security criteria while various
designs and models are tested. IFAB decided at the meeting that it would take
its final decision in July based on the testing results.
Speaking at a news conference at last week’s FIFA congress
in Budapest, Dr. D’Hooghe, in a sudden about face withdrew from his earlier
backing of the IFAB decision saying that “we have received some samples and
some doctors, including from the Muslim countries, said they (headscarves)
represented a danger. When a girl is running at speed someone can hit the head
scarf and that can lead to head lesions,” he said. Dr D’Hooghe suggested that
further testing may be needed.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Dr. D’Hooghe’s
turnaround and he did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. D’Hooghe was a co-drafter and signatory of a statement that
favoured allowing a head dress issued last October at a meeting in Amman of
soccer executives, referees, players and this reporter convened by FIFA Vice
President Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, a half-brother of Jordanian King Abdullah
who campaigned for his soccer post on a platform that called for greater women’s
rights.
The statement defined the hijab, a head dress that covers a
woman’s hair, neck and ears in accordance with Muslim custom as a cultural
rather than a religious issue. “The hijab issue has taken centre stage in
football circles in recent years due to the increasing popularity of women’s
football worldwide. It is a cultural issue that not only affects the game, but
also impacts society and sports in general. It is not limited to Asia, but
extends to other continents as well,” the statement said.
It called on FIFA to articulate a clear policy that
“avoid(s) any form of discrimination or exclusion of football players due to
cultural customs” and establishes the pitch as “a forum for cultural exchange
rather than conflict.”
Dr. D’Hooghe, one of FIFA’s longest serving executive
committee members, has since reportedly denied involvement in the drafting of
the statement or having agreed to sign it.
Proponents of the head dress believe that Dr. D’Hooghe’s
turnaround and the effort to backtrack on IFAB’s decision – employing medical
arguments much like the English Football Association did almost a century ago
when it banned women’s soccer – strengthens an uncoordinated scala of conservative
anti-Muslim, sexist, feminist and conservative Muslim opposition to the head
dress by disparate parties that each have different interests.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s most conservative Muslim nation, has
privately argued against the IFAB decision because it undermines the kingdom’s rejection
of women’s sports in general and soccer in particular. IFAB’s endorsement came
at a moment that Saudi Arabia, the only nation unlikely to be represented by
women at this summer’s Olympics, is under mounting pressure from the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) as well as human rights and women’s
groups to include women in its delegation in London.
Any delay in the definitive approval of the hijab by IFAB
could have implications for teams competing FIFA Under-17 Women's World Cup in
Baku in September – a move that would make Saudi Arabia appear less isolated.
FIFA insiders suggest that the soccer body’s president, Sepp
Blatter, widely believed to be a conservative Catholic, is ambiguous towards
the hijab. A former president in the 1970s of the World Society of Friends of
Suspenders that campaigns against women swapping their suspender belts for
pantyhose, Mr. Blatter famously said when asked in 2004 how to popularize
soccer: "Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in
volleyball. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they
already have some different rules to men – such as playing with a lighter ball.
That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in
fashion?"
Mr. Blatter advised gays in 2010 after Qatar, a country that
bans homosexuality, was awarded the 2022 World Cup to “refrain from sexual
activities” during the tournament.
A meeting of the 17-member FIFA medical committee in the
wake of the IFAB decision focused on the threat of carotid sinus irritation - a
condition to which men over 50 rather than women are susceptible - that a head
dress could pose rather than on the danger of strangulation or heat emission,
according to persons familiar with the proceedings.
Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Bruce D. Lindsay, a sports medical
expert, refuted the threat in a letter to Prince Ali dated May 21.
“If vigorous carotid sinus massage were performed by a
physician with knowledge of anatomy, it might cause minor slowing of the pulse
or possibly a brief pause in a healthy young athlete; however, even this
response would be blunted during the level of exertion expected during a
football game… it is extremely unlikely that a reasonable degree of carotid
pressure would have any effect. The risk of inducing loss of consciousness is
negligible. There is no reason to believe that a light headscarf with breakaway
attachments, such as Velcro or magnets, would exert effective occlusive pressure
simultaneously on both carotid arteries such as occurs when a choke hold is
used in Judo or hand to hand combat. In summary, there is no medical basis to
prevent women from playing football with sports headscarfs that are designed
for quick release in the event of inadvertent contact,” Dr. Lindsay wrote.
During the committee meeting, a female woman staffer was
asked to put on one of the designer’s head dresses. Committee members,
including three from the Arab world, pulled at the head dress, according to
persons familiar with the proceedings, on the basis of which the committee
declared it unsafe.
At a follow-up meeting called at Prince Ali’s request, designers
of head dresses for soccer players and representatives of testing institutions
briefed Dr. D’Hooghe and committee advisor Jiri Dvorak.
Dr. D’Hooghe advised FIFA on the basis of the two meetings
that designs presented to the medical committee had been deemed unsafe.
“We were shocked that he could write a recommendation on
that basis. We don’t know what prompted this or changed his mind,” said Michele
Cox, a director of Prince Ali’s foundation, Asian Football Development Project,
and a former member of FIFA’s women’s committee who attended the Amman meeting.
Prince Ali said in an interview that he has called on Dr. D’Hooghe
and Mr. Dvorak to explain their reversal and rejection of the head dress to
IFAB at its next meeting in July. Prince Ali said the hijab issue should be
addressed with the same sincerity FIFA approaches other issues such as goal
line technology and various designs should be rigorously tested on the pitch
for a period of time. “Let them do it properly,” Prince Ali said.
The IFAB meeting is likely to be a litmus test of Mr.
Blatter’s intentions. IFAB’s eight members -- four from FIFA as well as one
each from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland – are appointed in advance of
each of its meetings. Dr. D’Hooghe is often one of the FIFA representatives
when IFAB discusses medical issues. FIFA has yet to announce who will represent
it at IFAB’s next meeting and if Dr. D’Hooghe is delegated whether he would be
attending as a decision making IFAB member or an expert witness.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.
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