Zach LarkinsSOME NERVE
A little while ago, I reported on a Muslim girl who was not allowed to play in a soccer tournament if she insisted on wearing her hijab. I said at the time "What should be a non-story is likely to develop into a full blown question of Muslim rights vs a soccer league's tournament." Apparently, I was right.
This thing has gone before all sorts of official soccer regulators with the bottom line being that the referee is bound by the rules set out by the prevailing soccer authority in charge of the tournament. Jean Charest, campaigning for the premiership of Quebec, were this took place, was asked for his views. Does nobody think he has better things to worry about right now?
Regardless, now we have the oh so liberal Egyptians chiming in. The foreign ministry of Egypt sent a representative to the Canadian Embassy in Cairo to express concern over the case of Azzy Mansour, the 11-year-old Nepean soccer player recently removed from a game for wearing an Islamic headscarf. It must have been humourous explaining to Egyptian authorities that in Canada there is such a thing as private life, and that the job of referees in sporting contests here does not include enforcing either government policy or religious law. Egypt's ambassador to Canada, Mahmoud el-Saeed, trying to minimize the dimensions of the dispute, still claimed an implicit role for his government in protecting Canadian Muslims from discrimination.
"Honestly," he said, "if you look at things from a world perspective, it is as if Muslim or Islam are under attack and under siege around the world." Even if this perspective is shared, and radical Muslims are prone to feeling "besieged" by trifles like newspaper cartoons and damaged Korans, I have to wonder if the soccer pitch is the right place to begin the counterattack. According to a prepared statement, the Egyptian government wishes to make it known to Canadians that "The question of wearing the headscarf should remain a part of individual freedoms, so long as it does not harm security, public order or the values of a society." Coming from a government like Egypt's, terms like "freedom" must be taken with more than a ton of salt.
The country's ruling National Democratic Party enjoys total control over the registration of potential rivals, journalists face jail for criticizing public officials, and unfair trials and prison torture are standard. Shariah Law is uniform throughout the land, and the Coptic Christian minority lives with discriminatory legal restrictions and the constant threat of spontaneous extremist violence. But Egypt is ready to tell us about freedom.
Their lecture to us is rather two-faced when it comes so soon after the trial and imprisonment of 22-year-old "Kareem Amer" (Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman), an Alexandrian weblogger sentenced to four years in prison last month for crimes of expression including "spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country's reputation," "incitement to hate Islam" and "defaming the President of the Republic." We do all that and more without any threat of imprisonment, but Egypt is the great defender of freedom? Hardly. In layman's terms, Amer had the audacity to write in English and Arabic about his displeasure with the one-party government he lives under, his free-thinking religious views and the quality of Egyptian society in general and Al-Azhar University, where he once studied law, in particular.
It is interesting to note how quick some Muslim regimes are to reinterpret specific criticisms of institutions and habits as "hate" of Islam in general. After all, who else but a dangerous apostate maniac would dare utter a word against the great Al-Azhar University? This may explain why the siege mentality is so prevalent in parts of the Muslim world. The boundaries between religious morals, public custom, God's authority and the state are rather hazy under Islamic rule. Hazy enough that a civilized request to remove a headscarf can become a cause celebre half a world away.
Sources: The National Post Egypt's Lecture Is Galling
This thing has gone before all sorts of official soccer regulators with the bottom line being that the referee is bound by the rules set out by the prevailing soccer authority in charge of the tournament. Jean Charest, campaigning for the premiership of Quebec, were this took place, was asked for his views. Does nobody think he has better things to worry about right now?
Regardless, now we have the oh so liberal Egyptians chiming in. The foreign ministry of Egypt sent a representative to the Canadian Embassy in Cairo to express concern over the case of Azzy Mansour, the 11-year-old Nepean soccer player recently removed from a game for wearing an Islamic headscarf. It must have been humourous explaining to Egyptian authorities that in Canada there is such a thing as private life, and that the job of referees in sporting contests here does not include enforcing either government policy or religious law. Egypt's ambassador to Canada, Mahmoud el-Saeed, trying to minimize the dimensions of the dispute, still claimed an implicit role for his government in protecting Canadian Muslims from discrimination.
"Honestly," he said, "if you look at things from a world perspective, it is as if Muslim or Islam are under attack and under siege around the world." Even if this perspective is shared, and radical Muslims are prone to feeling "besieged" by trifles like newspaper cartoons and damaged Korans, I have to wonder if the soccer pitch is the right place to begin the counterattack. According to a prepared statement, the Egyptian government wishes to make it known to Canadians that "The question of wearing the headscarf should remain a part of individual freedoms, so long as it does not harm security, public order or the values of a society." Coming from a government like Egypt's, terms like "freedom" must be taken with more than a ton of salt.
The country's ruling National Democratic Party enjoys total control over the registration of potential rivals, journalists face jail for criticizing public officials, and unfair trials and prison torture are standard. Shariah Law is uniform throughout the land, and the Coptic Christian minority lives with discriminatory legal restrictions and the constant threat of spontaneous extremist violence. But Egypt is ready to tell us about freedom.
Their lecture to us is rather two-faced when it comes so soon after the trial and imprisonment of 22-year-old "Kareem Amer" (Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman), an Alexandrian weblogger sentenced to four years in prison last month for crimes of expression including "spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country's reputation," "incitement to hate Islam" and "defaming the President of the Republic." We do all that and more without any threat of imprisonment, but Egypt is the great defender of freedom? Hardly. In layman's terms, Amer had the audacity to write in English and Arabic about his displeasure with the one-party government he lives under, his free-thinking religious views and the quality of Egyptian society in general and Al-Azhar University, where he once studied law, in particular.
It is interesting to note how quick some Muslim regimes are to reinterpret specific criticisms of institutions and habits as "hate" of Islam in general. After all, who else but a dangerous apostate maniac would dare utter a word against the great Al-Azhar University? This may explain why the siege mentality is so prevalent in parts of the Muslim world. The boundaries between religious morals, public custom, God's authority and the state are rather hazy under Islamic rule. Hazy enough that a civilized request to remove a headscarf can become a cause celebre half a world away.
Sources: The National Post Egypt's Lecture Is Galling
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