FIFA to vote on lifting hijab ban, Prince Ali says scarf poses no danger

By Mary ORMSBY
Australian-Egyptian soccer player Assmaah Helal wears a Muslim head cover, or hijab, during a training session in Sydney. Elite footballer Assmaah Helal is a fanatic for the world game, but a controversial FIFA ban on Muslim women playing in the hijab means she may never realise her dream of wearing the Australian jersey.

The 350 girls in the Islamic Soccer League are not afraid of a little rough stuff on Toronto’s east-end pitches, logging trophy wounds and earning bragging rights playing the game they love.

But not one girl has been on the DL because of hijab injury – despite insistence by FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, that headscarves are a danger to Islamic women who want to bend it like Beckham.

“We’ve never had an incident where hijab was an issue,” says Majied Ali, president of the 1,600-member ISL, whose female players – aged 5 to 18 –play with or without hijab. He estimates about 75 per cent of the girls wear it.

“Most of our girls tie hijab round their heads, not around their necks, somewhat similar to how a bandana is tied. Some other girls have invested in the Velcro-type of (tear-away) hijab.”

So, the girls have figured out a way to play safe?

“Certainly,” Ali says, chuckling.

Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein, a FIFA vice president, also believes female soccer players are capable of competing safely in hijab. On Saturday, Prince Ali will ask FIFA’s rule makers during a meeting in Bagshot, west of London, England, to lift the five-year-old ban on Islamic players wearing headscarves.

Prince Ali’s argument to the International Football Association Board (IFAB) is, essentially, two-pronged. He will suggest a Dutch-designed tear-away headscarf with a Velcro opening be used to quell strangling fears. He will also present the garment as a cultural symbol of modesty rather than a religious item.

Prince Ali, 36, is the youngest member of FIFA’s powerful executive committee. He will need a three-quarters majority of IFAB voters to pass his proposal.

Prior to Saturday’s meeting, Prince Ali said he had not discovered any hijab-related injuries in women’s soccer matches. The Jordanian royal also warned FIFA that millions of Muslim women are being driven away from soccer by the hijab ban.

“It is very important that everybody has the chance to play the sport that they love and obviously the laws of the games have to be amended to allow that,” Prince Ali told Reuters during a trip to Singapore in February.

He also told Reuters that “we need to give the right to (play) to everyone across the world and we have to respect each others cultures.”

The ban has a Canadian angle. The IFAB backed the Quebec Soccer Federation in 2007 when the provincial body prevented an 11-year-old from playing a match when she refused to remove her headscarf.

Last year, the rule had Olympic implications. The Iranian women’s soccer team wasn’t allowed to play its 2012 Olympic second round qualifying match against Jordan because the players refused to remove their hijabs – which were snug-fitting, athletic head pieces – before kickoff.

Sertac Sehlikoglu Karakas is a PhD candidate in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. The Turkish-Canadian is owner of the blog muslimwomeninsports.

Sehlikoglu Karakas says “sports is an important tool to empower women” but it’s wrong to assume all Muslim women are carbon copies of each other. For instance, the Istanbul native notes FIFA’s current ban doesn’t exclude Muslims females who don’t wear head scarves.

“(The term) ‘Muslim women’ is not a single group looking, thinking and feeling similar,” Sehlikoglu Karakas writes in an email.

“So, such a (soccer) ban drives away one group of Muslim women who believe in modesty and prefer to observe Islam in terms of dress code. These women often face bans in international games and cannot participate. However, it is equally important to recognize that there are Muslim sportswomen who have been competing in international games for decades . . . who do not follow Islamic dress codes or simply do not believe that such a dress code (i.e. headscarf) is Islamic.”

Pickering’s Sarah Hassanein, 19, is a soccer-playing, hijab-wearing York University human rights and equity student. She plays the indoor game now, hopes to make an under-21 rep team this summer and plans to volunteer with the Islamic Soccer League to coach an Under-10 girls team.

Hassanein says her two-piece, tight-fitting sporting hijab has “never really been an issue” with officials who are sometimes “curious” about it.

“They ask me if there are any pins in it, the way you’d check for hair clips,” Hassanein says, whose headscarf is pin-free. Many sports insist athletes remove hair clips, necklaces, jewellery and watches before play.

“One time I was asked if it was a hood. Some people just don’t know and I had to explain it was hijab. You can usually sort it out.”

A Canadian Soccer spokesperson says on-field officials are directed by their provincial bodies on how to deal with any safety issues regarding hijab use.

Hassanein says “it’s amazing” Prince Ali is battling with FIFA on behalf of hijab-wearing Muslim women. Even if he fails to rescind the ban, the York student says his efforts will provoke positive international discussion.

“Not a lot of Muslim women are involved in competitive sports, I guess maybe because it’s difficult and there’s a stigma involved with hijab, but I think everyone should take it as an opportunity to get out there to be more active, politically, in sports, in volunteering, in any way you can.”

Sehlikoglu Karakas says she will be following Prince Ali’s crusade closely, crossing her fingers for the ban to be lifted.

“I believe that it is a terrible mistake to ask a person to choose between their faith and sports, especially when there are several alternative ways to accommodate both.”

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1140485--fifa-to-vote-on-lifting-hijab-ban-prince-ali-says-scarf-poses-no-danger?bn=1