The Soccer Fatwa

More news about the fatwa against football I blogged on Sunday: some say it is satire but it is treated seriously by Saudi clerics and newspaper columnists who say it has convinced some players that the game is un-Islamic and has been used to recruit them into the Iraqi insurgency. That said, it is also reported that senior Saudi clerics have rejected the fatwa. And newspaper columnists are calling it an example of an extremist ideology targeting Muslim youth.

In Egypt, where football is even more appreciated than in Britain, religious authorities are more in tune with the population’s desire: Soccer is an inappropriate topic for a fatwa, says the secretary-general of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Abdel Sabour Marzouk. He says football has absolutely nothing to do with a fatwa. It is an athletic activity about which no revelation has been given by God, and the Koran has not referred to it.

He doesn’t even have anything against sports-wear, like shorts and t-shirts, in contrast to other scholars who have issued fatwas that demands modest attire from both men and women. He says only people with sick minds and weak souls are focusing on the players’ legs instead of how well the player shoots the ball.

Ups! My mind must be the sickest of the sick and my soul corrupted more than he can imagine because honestly, I never found anything interesting with soccer-football except the player’s bodies. Especially in Egypt where they don’t know how to play anyway. But keep playing, Ahli and Zamalek. And know that I and my girlfriends are in front of the telly while you’re at it, with loud comments that are nothing less than sexual harassment.

Maybe we need that fatwa. It is Ramadan, after all. Peace. Link.