WHEN Rimla Akhtar travels to Anfield to watch her beloved Liverpool, she wears a scarf — not the red and white variety favoured by fellow Kopites but a silky strip, called a hijab, which she wraps around her head. Last season she took the train from her home in London to watch six Barclays Premiership matches and three Champions League games. She also travelled to Istanbul to see Liverpool capture the European Cup, an evening that she describes as “one of the most memorable of my life”.
Yesterday she flew to Iran as captain of the Great Britain five-a-side football team to compete in the fourth International Islamic Women’s Games. The concept of Muslim women congregating in Tehran for a multisport festival will come as a surprise to those who associate Islam with genital mutilation, polygamy and other forms of female repression. This extreme view of Islam has been reinforced in recent weeks by headlines surrounding Sania Mirza, the Indian world No 34 tennis player, who was on the receiving end of a fatwa.
“The dress she wears on the tennis courts . . . leaves nothing to the imagination,” Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, of the Sunni Ulema Board, said. “She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence.” This episode recalled the experiences of Hassiba Boulmerka, the Algerian winner of the 1992 Olympic 1,500 metres title, who was forced into exile because of death threats from countrymen who objected to her wearing shorts.
Akhtar, however, is quick to point out that these instances are unrepresentative of the experiences of the vast majority of Muslim women in sport. I met her, along with Ayesha Abdeen, her vice-captain, at a Bengali restaurant in northwest London and they vigorously shook their heads at the notion that Islam discourages the sporting participation of women.
“It is true that some extremists object to women playing sport under any circumstances, but they are a small minority,” Akhtar said. “In mainstream Islam, discussion surrounds the question of whether women should cover their legs and head. My personal view is that it is wrong to play in shorts with men present. Most of the other women in the team feel the same way, which has made training quite difficult. Fortunately, we found a venue in Watford that excluded men when we were training there. At the Games no men, either officials or spectators, will be present except at the opening ceremony.”
Abdeen, on the other hand, is rather more liberal than her captain. “I have no problem wearing shorts in front of men, but I would not get into an argument with team-mates about it,” she said. Akhtar was quick to concur. “The key point is that, although we disagree, we respect each other’s right to choose,” she said. “Tolerance is an important part of Islam.”
The difference between them is one of interpretation rather than religious commitment. Both pray five times daily, attend a mosque and regard their faith as the most important thing in their life. “You will find that there are almost as many interpretations of the Koran as there are Muslims,” Akhtar said.
Christians will find this diversity familiar, given the plethora of denominations ranging from Baptist to Brethren. A difference between the religions, however, is that the fulcrum in the Islamic spectrum of views is less egalitarian than its Christian counterpart. Or, to put it another way, Muslims tend to be more faithful to the misogyny in the Koran than Christians are to the misogyny in the Bible. Akhtar, for example, takes the Koran at face value when it says that men can, under certain circumstances, take up to four wives.
But such views are in decline among British Muslims. Second and third-generation immigrants tend to be less doctrinaire than their parents and grandparents, something that is increasingly reflected in attitudes towards sport. In a straw poll of PE teachers at Muslim-dominated schools in Tower Hamlets, East London, it emerged that the instances of girls being forbidden to participate in after-school sports clubs is diminishing rapidly.
Indeed, if you travel down to the playing fields of East London, it is likely that you will see hijab-wearing girls playing football with their friends and brothers, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Sidra Mughal is a level two football coach with the “West Ham Asians in Football” programme who, in her hijab and jogging bottoms, tours around schools taking classes and after- school clubs. “Of course it is more difficult to get girls to join our clubs than boys,” she said. “But things are changing. Muslims are getting less and less judgmental about women in sport.”
This trend extends beyond the UK. Speaking to The Times from her home in Casablanca, Nawal El Moutawakel, the first woman from an Islamic country to win an Olympic gold medal, in the 400 metres hurdles in 1984, said that participation rates at the Olympic Games among Muslim women are rising. “Islam is a tolerant religion which understands the value of sport and the lessons it teaches about solidarity, self-esteem and discipline,” she said.
“This applies to both women and men, although it will take time to convince those of a fundamentalist persuasion to accept this. We have to go slowly. It is much better to gently encourage those with a different cultural perspective than simply to criticise.”
In the light of recent terrorist attacks, there has been an overdue reassessment of the merits of multiculturalism. We should not, however, tarnish all those who profess a belief in the Koran with the brush of fundamentalism. Islam is a term that describes a number of viewpoints. Do not forget that many Christians reject the notion of female ordination.
Akhtar and Abdeen, about to begin their quest in Tehran, are in the midst of a gentle revolution in the attitudes of Muslims. As Abdeen said, quoting from the movie about a Sikh girl who falls in love with football: “Why make aloo gobi when you can bend it like Beckham?”
BREAKING THE RELIGIOUS TABOO
NAWAL EL MOUTAWAKEL
Now 43, the Moroccan triumphed in the inaugural women’s Olympic 400 metres hurdles in 1984 in Los Angeles, becoming the first Muslim and first African woman to win Olympic gold. Became a member of the IOC in 1998 and was head of the commission that evaluated the 2012 bids.
SANIA MIRZA
The 18-year-old from Hyderabad became the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a grand-slam event at this year’s US Open. Has provoked widespread comment with the slogans on her press conference T-shirts, including “I’m Cute?” and “Well-behaved women rarely make history”.
HASSIBA BOULMERKA
Triumphed in the 1,500 metres at the World Championships in 1991 in Tokyo and the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992 (the latter made her the first Algerian to win gold at an Olympic Games). Was later elected on to the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission.
- matthew.syed@mps-sports.com
