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In the same week that Hillary Clinton announced her women's soccer initiative, aimed at increasing the access to soccer for girls worldwide, news broke out that the Iranian women's soccer team was disqualified from their Olympic qualifying match against Jordan for showing up to play wearing the hijab.
"This ruling means that women soccer in Iran is over" according to Shahrazad Mozafar, the team's former head coach, quoted in the Washington Post. According to the Post article, she said that the Iranian government would not send women abroad for competitions if they cannot wear their hijabs.
There we have it. One step forward for women's sport, and two steps back.
In April 2010 FIFA announced that it was planning to ban "headscarves" and other religious items during the 2012 Olympics. Following the ruling, the Iranian team had made various efforts to redesign the hijabs that they wear during their matches to make them fit into the FIFA guidelines.
The most recent ruling on the issue came through a 3-0 loss to Jordan. Jordan, ironically enough, had previously "decided not to select" (aka cut) a number of athletes who had insisted on wearing a hijab according to FIFA officials.
Is this really what FIFA and the International Olympic Committee want? What this ruling, and the FIFA rules, are effectively doing is keeping women who wear the hijab- whether because of deeply held religious beliefs, or because of deeply rooted laws they are forced to obey- out of the Olympics, and, ultimately, out of competitive sport completely. Are women in Iran not subject to harsh enough treatment as it is? Why take a good thing away from them.
And for those with you doubting my prediction that this will kill women's sport in Iran, take it from the horses mouth:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, head of the Iranian football organization has stated that the ruling is killing professional athletic ambitions of Iranian women. "When a serious women athlete can't participate internationally, what ambitious are left for her?"
I do not often agree with Iranian government officials- actually I do not think I ever have- but Mahmoud is right.
If these women aren't allowed to compete, why on earth would they continue to train and why would the government continue to fund it? They will not.
What about the other women, in other nations, that are serious athletes that wear the hijab? This is not just an Iran v. FIFA v. IOC issue. All of these women are impacted. Some people may say "Why don't they just play without the hijab?" Well, for women who wear one, everyday of their life and have never been out in public without one, this would be roughly the equivalent of asking all male baseball players to play without a jock, or all female tennis players to play without a shirt on. It just will not happen.


Look at the women's faces in the picture above. This photo was taken after they were told they could not play in the qualifying match. Clearly the athletes are discouraged beyond belief. Do you not think that if they could simply "play without the hijab" they would have?
The Women's Sports Foundation published this article entitled "Unveiling Myths: Muslim Women and Sport" that gets into much greater detail about the problems that Muslim women face in international athletics then I have time to do in this blog post. However, for me, this quote sums up exactly how I feel about the situation:

"What matters is not what an athlete wears to play but the fact that she participates and takes from the sporting experience. We have struggled for decades to provide women with equal opportunity in sport and have overcome both the prejudices and extremist discrimination that keep Muslim women's sports unexposed and underdeveloped today. For the sake of unity and humanity, it's time to unveil the myths and truly celebrate the glorious participation of all women in sports."

If Hillary Clinton is serious about the "women's soccer initiative" and using sport for diplomacy and improving opportunities for women, she better step up to the plate on this one. What better opportunity to improve the opportunities for women in Iran, as well as extend an olive branch to middle eastern nations.
Now that would be sport for diplomacy.

For more on this story visit Muslim Women in Sports: http://www.muslimwomeninsports.blogspot.com/

and From a Left Wing:
http://fromaleftwing.blogspot.com/

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This post is related to an ongoing story:

• FIFA Bans Hijab, Pushes Iranian Team to the Sidelines

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