Turkey gears up to give Gulf states a run for their money

By James M. Dorsey

The Gulf states dominate headlines with Qatar’s controversial hosting of a World Cup and the high profile acquisition of European soccer teams, but they may be meeting their match in an emerging competition for being the Middle East and North Africa’s prime sports, transportation and economic hub.

Turkey may not have the Gulf’s financial muscle, but on virtually every other front it brings assets to the table that smaller oil-rich states lack: geographic and demographic depth; a soccer-crazy population that fills stadium; storied, internationally accomplished and recognized clubs; a respectable international track record in a variety of other sports, including basketball and volleyball; ethnic, cultural and ex-colonial links across a swath of land stretching from China to the Atlantic coast of Africa; a functioning democracy with all its warts that many see as a model for the Muslim world; a highly developed educational sector; one of the world’s largest standing armies; and a state-of-the-art industrial base that drives on indigenous labor.

Turkey ranks number 18 on the list of the world’s largest economies ahead of Saudi Arabia at number 20, the United Arab Emirates at 30 and Qatar at 51 despite the fact that many Gulf states have a nominally higher GDP.

A look at Turkey’s sporting ambitions as well as the expansion of its national airline, Turkish Airlines, and its plans for a third Istanbul airport tell the story. Turkish sports minister Suat Kilic hinted this week at his country’s ambition, telling World Football Insider that Turkey’s hosting this summer of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, the biggest sporting event to be held in Turkey to date, would be a platform to “showcase Turkey’s capabilities” to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

To be sure, its not all smooth sailing for Turkey. Its premier soccer has been wracked by a major match-fixing scandal exasperated by a power struggle among Islamists and financial crisis as a result of over spending. And European soccer body UEFA’s opposition to Turkey’s simultaneous bid for the Olympics and the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship (Euro 2020) prompted it to spread that year’s tournament over a multitude of European nations. Qatar, the UAE and China moreover have easier access to capital compared to Turkey

But putting such concerns aside, the future looks promising. Beyond bringing a greater number of key assets to the table, Turkey, the literal dividing line in Eurasia, and the Gulf compete on a level playing field in exploiting geography to create an air transportation hub at the meeting point of Europe, Asia and Africa: like Qatar and the UAE, Istanbul is at flying equidistance from Sao Paolo and Sydney with easy access to Africa and Central Asia.

Turkish Airlines flies to 200 destinations and to more countries than any other carrier in the world as opposed to Emirates’ 120 and Qatar Airways’ 115 destinations. Turkey’s plans for a new, six runway airport, the world’s largest in terms of passenger capacity, capture its global ambitions. Turkey is currently entertaining bids at the very moment that Qatar is about to open its long-touted new air hub. The new airport would also surpass Dubai, which currently claims the honor.

Both Turkey and the Gulf states populate a volatile region that has embarked on what is likely to be a decade of messy and at times violent and bloody change. At this point, Turkey is closer than the Gulf to the turmoil with its long border with Syria and close cross-border links as well as its proximity to Lebanon that increasingly is teetering on the brink.

But contrary to the autocratic Gulf, which so far has largely been able to ring-fence itself against the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, few predict upheaval in Turkey, a traditionally politically instable country that is witnessing a decade of stability and near unprecedented rule by one party that has gone from one electoral victory to another.

Turkey’s position as the regional powerhouse could be further boosted by a potential agreement with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) that would grant the country’s estimated 20 million Kurds greater rights and end almost 30 years of conflict that has left tens of thousands of people dead as well as last week’s restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel.

Reconciliation with Israel potentially paves the way to closer cooperation on Syria and cooperation in developing significant energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean. It also holds out hope for crisis-ridden Cyprus and progress in resolving the decades-old inter-communal dispute on the island by opening the door to the unthinkable: energy cooperation between Turkey and the Greek-Cypriot dominated government in Nicosia.

Turkey expects its sporting ambitions to be boosted by the ongoing visit of a 14-member committee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to evaluate Istanbul’s bid as well as by world soccer body FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke for the U-20 World Cup draw. The tournament in late June and early July involves 52 matches in seven host cities and will immediately follow the 24-nation Mediterranean Games. The IOC last year rejected Qatar’s bid for the 2020 Olympics.

“International sports authorities will think that if Turkey is capable of hosting two great sporting events at the same time, it’s capable of host the Olympics,” sports minister Kilic told World Football Insider.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a soccer fan and former player, makes no bones about Turkey’s strategy that includes sports. “The whole world must know that Turkey has big ambitions, based on national will and a strong State,” he told Turkish diplomats almost a decade ago.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, visiting scholar at the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Sport Science, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Identity politics shape Middle Eastern and North African soccer

Hany Ramzy: The exception that confirms the rule

By James M. Dorsey

Hany Ramzy returned to Egypt from this month’s London Olympics a soccer hero and a model in a country and a region in which identity politics rather national identity often governs the beautiful game.

A Coptic Christian and one-time legendary national soccer team captain in a squad whose former national coach Hassan Shehata established Muslim piety as a criterion for membership equal to skill, Mr. Ramzy, the coach of Egypt’s Olympic soccer team, symbolizes what is possible as well as the immense problems Middle Eastern and North African nations have in coming to grips with their ethnic and religious minorities.

Popular uprisings in the past year in countries like Syria and Bahrain have turned sectarian as are protests in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and the fallout of the insurgency in Syria in neighbouring countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq that have sectarian or ethnic overtones. Soccer teams across the region in Iran, Israel, Iraqi Kurdistan, Egypt, Algeria, Palestine and Jordan are often as much about sports as they are about identity.

Mr. Ramzy led his team to the quarterfinals in London against the backdrop of a popular revolt that forced president Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office and 18 months of political volatility and violence. In one incident last October, 28 people, mostly Copts, were killed and 212 injured when security forces and the military attacked demonstrators protesting against the demolition of a church in Upper Egypt.

“Egypt’s participation in the Olympics could not be more symbolic of the role sports plays as a means to regain national pride and social unity,” said journalist Mustafa Abdelhalim in an analysis published by Common Ground that was as much about hope as it was about reality.

To be sure, Copts play in Egyptian premier league teams as do Kurds in Iraqi squads, Palestinians in Israel, Berbers in Algeria and Azeris in Iran. Mr. Ramzy is credited with Egypt’s winning of the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations championship. And the Egyptian national team has no doubt abandoned its religious discrimination under its current coach, American Bob Bradley.

Yet, major teams in the region, including Traktorsazi in the Iranian province of Eastern Azerbaijan, Bnei Sakhnin and Beitar Jerusalem in Israel and Jeunesse Kabyle in Algeria as well as the national teams of Iraqi Kurdistan and Palestine are key tools in projecting national or sectarian identities. So are the at times violent protests of their supporters.

Mr. Ramzy, one of the few if not the only Coptic Egyptian national team player in past decades, is the exception that proves the rule in a country in which the Coptic Church has its own Copts-only soccer league believed to include hundreds of clubs and some 10,000 players. Mr. Ramzy is believed to owe his success to a significant extent to the fact that he earned prestige by being hired by various European teams, including Neuchâtel Xamax, Werder Bremen and Kaiserslautern.

“In Egypt, there is a problem that many people don't even consider. This problem relates to not allowing the Copts to play in the national teams of sports, especially soccer which is the most popular game in Egypt. Marginalization of young Copts by the Football Association and the administrations of Egyptian clubs resulted in having no Coptic players in the core teams. Youth teams have very few Copts and they are laid off as soon as they reach certain age and never take the chance to promote,” says Safwat Freeze Ghali, writing on the website of Copts United.

Charging that soccer discrimination against Copts encourages discrimination by Muslims and anger and hate among Copts, who account for some 10 per cent of all Egyptians, Mr. Ghali speaks out of personal experience.

“I suffered from this problem with my son who was born in 1995 and has a great talent in soccer. Many people have said so after they saw him playing. My son then started in a small club, but never took a chance to play. His coach treats him so badly and his colleagues make fun of his Christian name. His coach told him: I won't let you touch the ball (play in the team) and never ask me why! We got fed up and I took him to a bigger club and they liked him very much and promised to recruit him but they never did. Then, I moved him to another club where they liked him too, but when the coach knew his name (a Christian name), he said: We'll see, later!,” Mr. Ghali wrote.

Under the leadership of Hassan Shehata, a legendary pro-Mubarak coach who resigned last year after leading Egypt to three successive African titles, the unwritten rule was that only practicing Muslims could join the national team. Players prayed before games for God’s intervention and offered up prayers of thanks for goals and victories. To join the team, players had to pass a religious a pious behaviour litmus test alongside demonstrating their soccer skills. “Without it, we will never select any player regardless of his potential,” Mr. Shehata, who dumped a talented player for visiting a nightclub rather than a mosque, was quoted as saying. “I always strive to make sure that those who wear the Egypt jersey are on good terms with God.” Mr. Shehata’s statements and policy sparked furore but no change.  

At the time, it apparently never occurred to Mr. Sheheta that his righteous squad may have lost its critical 2010 World Cup qualifier game because God loves Algeria and its team too. It seemingly also never occurred to world soccer body FIFA to stop a dangerous trend in its tracks. Imagine what would happen if other national teams had follow Egypt’s example; if England had insisted that its players worship in the Church of England; Italy made Catholicism the team’s central tenet; Germany booted all Turkish Muslims off the field;  Japan played only Buddhists; and Israel declared itself a Jewish team for a Jewish state and exiled its Arab players. Not to speak of the limitations it would put on recruiting top players.  

“In June 2012 London’s Wembley Stadium was the site of a ‘faith and football’ day that united students from Muslim, Christian and Jewish schools. This event was planned by the Three Faiths Forum (3FF), a UK-based organization dedicated to building relationships between people of all faiths, and the UK Football Association, which officially oversees the sport in the country. Egyptians could replicate this example by creating nationwide leagues to promote intergroup and interfaith cooperation. These teams could include anyone who wants to participate in the sport and make Egyptians’ shared interest in sports a tool for a more inclusive society,” suggests Mr. Abdelhalim.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Saudi Arabia to allow women to compete in London Olympics

Dalma Rushdi Malhas, Saudi Arabia's likely female Olympic athlete

By James M. Dorsey

Saudi Arabia, in a sudden turnabout has lifted its ban on women athletes competing in international tournaments little more than a week after the death of Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, an opponent of women’s participation in global sports events.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the reversal that was announced in a statement by the Saudi embassy in London. A Saudi women equestrian is expected to be the conservative kingdom’s only female athlete likely to qualify for next month’s London Olympics. The kingdom does not encourage women’s sports, offer girls physical education in public schools or include women in its national sports plan.

The embassy statement followed months of sea-saw pronouncements on whether women would be allowed to compete in London, topped in April by a statement by Prince Nayef categorically ruling out. Prince Nayef, largely viewed as a conservative hardliner with close ties to Saudi Arabia’s religious leadership was succeeded as crown prince by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz who is believed to be more liberal.

"The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is looking forward to full participation" in the Olympic Games. "The Saudi Olympic Committee will oversee participation of female competitors who qualify," the Saudi embassy in London said.

If indeed implemented it would mark the first time that Saudi women are allowed to officially participate in an international sports tournament and would mean that the kingdom no longer is the only country in the world that refuses to allow women to compete on a global scale.

The embassy statement came at a time that Saudi women have been campaigning for greater rights, focusing on demands to lift a ban on women driving. Proponents of women’s driving submitted earlier this month a petition to King Abdullah with some 600 signatures.

Women driving however has so far been a bridge too far for the king. Scores of women who defied the ban in the past year have been arrested and forced to sign pledges that they would not drive again.  

Manal al-Sharif was detained in May of last year for nine days after she videotaped herself flouting the ban on women driving by getting behind a steering wheel and driving. She was released only after signing a statement promising that she would stop agitating for women's rights.

Prince Nayef dashed hopes that Saudi women would be allowed to participate in the Olympics a month after initially endorsed it by declaring in April that “female sports activity has not existed (in the kingdom) and there is no move thereto in this regard. At present, we are not embracing any female Saudi participation in the Olympics or other international championships.”

The International Olympic Committee which has been negotiating with Saudi Arabia about a lifting of the ban rejected at the time Saudi suggestions that Saudi women living abroad be allowed to compete under the Olympic flag rather than as part of the official Saudi delegation.

International human rights group Human Rights Watch accused Saudi Arabia in February of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.

The group’s charges contained in a report entitled “’Steps of the Devil’ came on the heels of the kingdom backtracking on a plan to build its first stadium especially designed to allow women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation to watch games. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014.

The report urged the IOC to require Saudi Arabia to legalize women's sports as a condition for its participation in Olympic games.

The embassy statement takes on broader significance coming at a time that King Abdullah is seeking to counter attempts by conservative clerics to thwart his minimal reforms and circumvent post-9/11 restrictions on charitable donating, designed to prevent funds from flowing to militant Islamists.

It’s a delicate balancing act for more reform-minded members of the royal family like King Abdullah who rely on the clergy to support the kingdom’s efforts to contain the Middle East and North Africa’s wave of anti-government protests that have already toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war. Some clerics have asserted that the protests stem from the mingling of the sexes in sports.

“In the past it was only men, now it is almost half half (in stadiums). Allah knows what happens afterwards. Either way it is bad. Either people go out, they are sensing and partying and drinking and all that, so that’s negative. And if they don’t, they go out and they demonstrate and they’re angry and they destroy property and they destroy cars and they destroy people’s business. Either way its haram (forbidden), things have to be done in moderation,” said A Saudi-backed imam Abu Abdellah of the As-Sunnah mosque in Kissimee, Florida. His statement was in line with a series of pronouncements by senior religious leaders in the kingdom itself.

Show-jumper Dalma Rushdi Malhas is likely to be Saudi Arabia’s only female representative in London if the kingdom adheres to the new policy announced by its London. Ms. Malhas in 2010 became the first Saudi woman to compete in the Youth Olympics, where she won a bronze participating on an individual basis rather than as part of a Saudi team.

"I am determined to give my best to reach their level one day, and prove that all women athletes, all over the world, should be given equal opportunities," 20-year old Ms. Malhas said in February at a conference where breaking with Saudi tradition she spoke with her hair uncovered.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.

Global Sporting Events: Battlegrounds for Human Rights

RSIS presents the following commentary Global Sporting Events: Battlegrounds for  Human Rights by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at  RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg No. 089/2012 dated 28 May 2012 Global Sporting Events: Battlegrounds for Human Rights  By James M. Dorsey        Synopsis With the London Olympics less than two months away major global sporting events are increasingly proving to be Middle Eastern battlegrounds for human rights rather than an expensive way for countries to boost their prestige and sense of national pride. Commentary Flashy, high-profile events in the Middle East like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Formula-1 in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi and tennis championships in Dubai have become leverage points in the hands of international and local activists and flashpoints of protest against autocratic regimes To detractors of Gulf Arab regimes the tournaments are symbols of an effort to retain power in part by squandering resources to pacify people with glittering totems of unbalanced and often misconceived development as well as games. That perception is reinforced by a sense that major economic benefactors of sporting events are often members of the host’s ruling family Currently the British Foreign Office is struggling whether to allow a Syrian general close to embattled President Bashar al-Assad to attend the Olympics. General Mowaffak  Joumaa, head of Syria's Olympic committee, has signaled his intention to be present in London in contrast to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said he was not coming because Britain had an undisclosed “problem” with his presence. The general sees his attendance as a way to project the Assad regime as an accepted member of the international community despite widespread condemnation of its brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters and rebels. Anti-government protests foiled a Bahraini attempt earlier this year to use Formula-1 to portray the country as stable and harmonious following last year’s hard-handed suppression of anti-government demonstrations. The attempt backfired. Rather than focusing on happenings on the race track, international attention turned instead to continued discontent and the government’s failure to move ahead with meaningful political and economic reforms demanded by the Shiite Muslim majority of the ruling Sunni majority. Meanwhile, Gulf states are feeling the heat of the labour movement to change foreign workers’ conditions, widely denounced as modern day slavery, as a result of Qatar’s winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup. Confronting existential fears Union pressure to change the labour system cuts to the core of the nature of Gulf societies, whose dependence on foreign labour has turned the local citizenry into a minority in countries like Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Beyond the commercial and economic advantages of a cheap pool of labour, discussion of any kind of rights for non-locals raises the spectre of minority Gulf populations no longer having countries that they control. Gulf states are nonetheless seeking to avoid confrontation with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries. The ITUC is threatening Qatar with a boycott campaign of the 2022 World Cup if it fails to bring the conditions of up to one million primarily Asian workers engaged in construction of stadiums and other huge infrastructure projects in line with international standards. Qatar’s Labour Minister Nassir bin Abdulla Alhumidi agreed recently to meet the ITUC for the first time at the International Labour Organisation conference next month. Saudi Arabia has followed Qatar in announcing that it was looking to replace employer sponsorship of workers with a licensing system. Qatari Labour Undersecretary Hussein Al-Mulla said earlier this month that the energy-rich Gulf state would form “an elected and independent workers’ union to protect workers’ rights regardless of their nationality.” However the moves by the Gulf states amount to too little too late. They have failed to appease the ITUC and have put world soccer body FIFA on the spot because it does not want to be seen as endorsing the staging of the world’s largest sporting event on the back of perceived slavery and violations of human rights. Until Qatar’s agreement to meet the ITUC next month governments in the Gulf had refused to engage in a dialogue with the trade unions and other interest groups who are using the staging of major global sporting events to push for changes that would bring the region into line with accepted international practice. They also seek to underwrite the calls for social justice echoing across North Africa and West Asia from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf that have been in revolt since December 2010. As a result, trade unions are moving ahead with plans for a global campaign under the motto 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights’, to deprive Qatar of its right to host the 2022 World Cup if it failed to align its labour legislation and workers’ condition with international standards. It was not immediately clear whether Al Mulla’s announcement went further than his proposal in early May to establish a Qatari-led labour committee that would represent workers’ interests rather than a union able to engage in collective bargaining; he had also proposed abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreign workers to freely change jobs. Battle for labour rights The unions’ sense of urgency stems from the death last year of some 200 Nepalese workers, allegedly as the result of harsh working conditions as well as the fact that companies are developing their supply chains and costing models for major infrastructure projects on the basis of what they describe as unacceptable labour terms. The battle for labour rights is one that could significantly alter the paradigm on which international sporting bodies like FIFA and the International Olympic Committee award hosting rights. A successful campaign for labour rights would force such bodies to take workers’ conditions and by extension, adherence to human rights, into account in the awarding of future tournaments. Qatar learnt the price of reputational risk this week when the International Olympic Committee rejected its bid for the 2020 Olympics The campaign could also spark long overdue debate over the unsustainable demographic structure of wealthy Gulf states that are home to generations of Gulf-born descendants of immigrants with no rights, no secure prospects and no real stake in the countries of their birth. As their number continues to increase, educated and prosperous Gulf-born expatriates are beginning to demand that they be given equal rights and caution that they no longer can be bought off with cushy tax-free incomes and benefits. The scion of a wealthy South Asian family in the Gulf, when asked whether he minded that his Gulf born children would grow up with no rights and no security, responded: “Absolutely, that is no longer acceptable. Gulf societies will have to change by hook or by crook.” James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has been a journalist covering the Middle East for over 30 years. Click here for past commentaries. Find us on Facebook Due to the high number of publications by our RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS), RSIS maintains a separate subscription facility for the Centre. Please click here to subscribe to the Centre's publications.

Qatari Olympic women athletes spotlight Wahhabi schism

Qatari sprinter Noor al-Malki (Source: insidethegames.biz)

By James M. Dorsey

The question for Qatari sprinter Noor al-Malki is not whether she will be part of the first group of Qatari women to ever compete in a global sports tournament at the 2012 London Olympics but how she will handle the fact that the competition will take place during Ramadan.

The question whether Ms. Al-Malki would be able to compete was resolved when Qatar, alongside Saudi Arabia and Brunei the only nation never to have been represented by women in a global sporting event, decided last year to allow women to compete in the London Olympics.

The decision was the result of Qatar’s concerted effort to become a sports power and mounting international pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), not to allow countries to compete that discriminate against athletes on the basis of gender.

It saved Qatar, already threatened with a global trade union campaign against its hosting of the 2022 World Cup because of the conditions under which it employs foreign labour, from becoming the target of yet another attack on its reputation, already dented by controversy over its successful campaign to win the right to host the World Cup. The bruising debate over the soccer tournament bid contributed to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to eliminate Qatar as a candidate for the 2020 Olympics.

The debate also highlights the major divide among Wahhabis, followers of 18th century puritan warrior priest Mohammed Abdul Wahhab, with Saudi Arabia, the only other country besides Qatar with a majority Wahhabi population, and the IOC still struggling barely two months before the opening of the London Olympics to find a formula that would circumvent the kingdom’s conservative opposition to women’s participation.

A Human Rights Watch report released in February, called on Saudi Arabia to protect women's equal right to sports and urged the IOC to live up to its charter, which prohibits discrimination, or face a ban similar to that imposed on Afghanistan in 1999 partly for its exclusion of female athletes.

For Ms. Al-Malki, the Qatari decision means that she is grappling beyond wanting to perform at the London Olympics with the requirement to fast during the 30 days of Ramadan during which the tournament will be held. If the decision to allow women to compete may have been difficult because of mounting conservative opposition to Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani’s liberal policies designed to position his tiny gas-rich Gulf state on the world map, resolving the issue of Ramadan coinciding with the Olympics is easy.

While Islamic law does not grant athletes dispensation from fasting during Ramadan, it does allow travellers to break the fast during their journey provided they catch up once they return home. Ms. Al-Malki will be travelling during the Olympics.

That is a luxurious position to be in compared to her Saudi counterparts who still do not know whether they will be going to London. Initial Saudi suggestions that the kingdom would for the first time send female athletes to the Olympics were dashed when Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud declared in April that “female sports activity has not existed (in the kingdom) and there is no move thereto in this regard. At present, we are not embracing any female Saudi participation in the Olympics or other international championships.”

The IOC has rejected Saudi suggestions that Saudi women living abroad be allowed to compete under the Olympic flag rather than as part of the official Saudi delegation.

"It's not an easy situation. There is a commitment. We're working steadily with them to find a good solution,” conceded IOC President Jacques Rogge at a recent news conference. "We are continuing to discuss with them, and the athletes are trying (to qualify). We would hope they will qualify in due time for the games."

With few Saudi women athletes likely to qualify for the Olympics, the IOC has gone out of its way to encourage participation by suggesting that they would be exempted from qualifying standards and granted entry under special circumstances.

Saudi women participation appears however increasingly unlikely with conservative opposition making it difficult for the government to back down at a time that it is rallying the wagons to shield itself against the wave of anti-government protests in the Middle East and North Africa that has already sparked increased political activism and mobilisation in the kingdom. At his news conference, Mr. Rogge declined to discuss possible penalties if the kingdom refused to include women in its Olympic team.

The Saudi government has recently employed the clergy to condemn the protests that have already toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war, which, according to some, are the result of the mingling of the sexes in sports.

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh denounced the protests earlier this month as sinful. "The schism, instability, the malfunctioning of security and the breakdown of unity that Islamic countries are facing these days is a result of the sins of the public and their transgressions," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.

Such sins include, according to Imam Abu Abdellah of As-Sunnah mosque in Kissimee, Florida, speaking in a video posted on the Internet, the mixing of the sexes at sports events. “In the past it was only men, now it is almost half half (in stadiums). Allah knows what happens afterwards. Either way it is bad. Either people go out, they are sensing and partying and drinking and all that, so that’s negative. And if they don’t, they go out and they demonstrate and they’re angry and they destroy property and they destroy cars and they destroy people’s business. Either way its haram (forbidden), things have to be done in moderation,” Abu Abedallah said.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Manei, a member of the Gulf Kingdom’s supreme scholars committee and an advisor to King Abdullah warned that “the spread of such (bad) acts on play fields is a clear indicator of a decline in moral values and the transformation of sport from fair competition into bigotry.”

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat. 

Saudi imams warn against mixing of sports, politics and protest

Saudi Grand Mufti: Protesters are sinful

By James M. Dorsey

Saudi and ultra-conservative imams have warned in separate statements against the mixing of sports and politics and protests against autocratic regimes, which, according to some, results from of the mingling of the sexes in sports.

The warnings come against the backdrop of Saudi efforts to shield the Gulf from the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, renewed focus on the role of militant soccer fans opposing military rule in Egypt and pressure on the kingdom to allow women to compete for the first time in an international tournament during the London Olympics.

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh quoted in the kingdom's Al Watan newspaper warned that the protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war were sinful. "The schism, instability, the malfunctioning of security and the breakdown of unity that Islamic countries are facing these days is a result of the sins of the public and their transgressions," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.

Such sins include, according to Imam Abu Abdellah of As-Sunnah mosque in Kissimee, Florida, speaking in a video posted on the Internet, the mixing of the sexes at sports events. “In the past it was only men, now it is almost half half (in stadiums). Allah knows what happens afterwards. Either way it is bad. Either people go out, they are sensing and partying and drinking and all that, so that’s negative. And if they don’t, they go out and they demonstrate and they’re angry and they destroy property and they destroy cars and they destroy people’s business. Either way its haram (forbidden), things have to be done in moderation. These are the things that are associated with sports that the believers have to be careful with,” Abu Abedallah said.

“So there is nothing wrong with watching and practicing your favourite sport as long as you adhere to the norms. When it comes to the way you dress and the way you behave, where you’re going to be, what are you going to be listening to; are you going to be mingling in crowds you are not supposed to be mingling with? All of those things do matter when you are practicing or you are watching your favourite sport,” the imam said.

The clerics’ statements came as Saudi Arabia prepares for a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which it hopes to foist closer political and military cooperation on its largely reluctant co-members Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. Bahrain, which last year brutally squashed with Saudi assistance an uprising against its minority Sunni Muslin rulers, is likely to be the only GCC state to fully endorse the notion of a political union.

The statements also come as International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge is under pressure to make good on his pledges earlier this year to stand for gender equality by banning Saudi Arabia from this year’s London Olympics if it fails to field women athletes. A Human Rights Watch report released in February, called on Saudi Arabia to protect women's equal right to sports and urged the IOC to live up to its charter, which prohibits discrimination, or face a ban similar to that imposed on Afghanistan in 1999 partly for its exclusion of female athletes.

With Qatar and Brunei expected to have women athletes for the first time this year in their delegations, Saudi Arabia would be the only country in the world that still refuses to allow women to compete. The kingdom has recently hinted that it would not stand against Saudi women living abroad competing, but would not field athletes from the kingdom itself.

In separate statements, two Saudi religious scholars admonished soccer players that bad behaviour could lead to a ban on public attendance of matches. It was not immediately clear what incidents of bad behaviour they were referring to.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Manei, a member of the Gulf Kingdom’s supreme scholars committee and an advisor to King Abdullah warned that “the spread of such (bad) acts on play fields is a clear indicator of a decline in moral values and the transformation of sport from fair competition into bigotry. The continuation of these bad phenomena which pose a threat to the ethical values of our sons makes the attendance of these matches a hateful thing. This means that going to these matches could become prohibited because what is happening there has a strong negative impact on the society.”

In a statement of his own, Sheikh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, another member of the supreme committee, denounced players for allegedly faking incidents in a bid to get a referee to award a penalty in their team’s favour. “These are acts of deception, which is hated and forbidden in Islam…..the sin becomes worse when the player swears by Allah falsely…players should refrain from such wrong acts as they have become a bad example for the young generation,” Sheikh Al Mutlaq said without reference to specific incidents.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.

Egyptian feminists challenge militant soccer fan chauvinism

Egyptian women demand uninhibited right to protest (Source: BikyaMasr)

By James M. Dorsey

An Egyptian feminist group has challenged militant soccer fans that played a key role in toppling president Hosni Mubarak to recognise women's rights to unrestricted protest.

The challenge exposes conservatism that is deeply rooted in Egyptian society and cuts across ideological, cultural and religious fault lines. It lays bare differing interpretations of concepts such as diversity, freedom and faith and highlights a battle by women who were prominent in the campaign to overthrow Mr. Mubarak to have their rights recognised in post-revolt Egypt.

The women confront a conservatism that pervades the Middle East and North Africa as illustrated by the recent creation of a soccer league in the United Arab Emirates that allows women to play behind closed doors in the absence of men as well as Saudi Arabia's struggle with the International Olympic Committee's demand that it include women among its athletes at this year's London Olympics.

UAE and Kuwaiti royals joined prominent foreign representatives this week at a two day conference to encourage women’s participants in sports and the launch of the Fatima Bint Mubarak Women's Sports Awards, named after the third wife of the founder of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who heads the Family Development Foundation.

Egyptian women are battling to have their rights acknowledged on two fronts: recognition by their often socially conservative revolutionary male counterparts as well as Egypt's post-Mubarak military rulers who have systematically humiliated detained women protesters by subjecting them to virginity tests. A court this week acquitted a military doctor who conducted the tests.

More secular Egyptian women fear that the rise of Islamists further threatens achievement of their rights. Islamists have dissolved the Women's Council, charging that it was a creation of Suzanne Mubarak, the ousted president's widely despised wife. Islamist members of parliament have also proposed the establishment of a family ministry that would operate in accordance with Islamic law and roll back legal advances introduced by the Mubarak regime.

The feminists issued their challenge in response to a decision by the ultras -- militant, highly politicised, soccer fans -- to allow women to participate in their 16-day old sit-in in front of parliament only during daytime and to ban them at night starting from 22:00.

The ultras are demanding justice for 74 of their comrades who died in a soccer brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said that they believe was instigated by the government in retaliation for their role in the ousting of Mr. Mubarak and their militant opposition to his military successors.

In a statement quoted on the Egyptian news website Bikya Masr, the Independent Egyptian Women's Union said that those "who carry the flame of liberty against the oppressive powers should respect it first." They said that their understanding of diversity and faith ruled out restricting women's right to protest.

The battle for women's rights is one that is being waged by different women's groups -- secular and religious -- whose definition of women’s rights varies both among Middle Eastern and North African groups as well as Western ones.

Western groups objected last month to a decision by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to allow observant Muslim women to wear a headdress that meets their religious and cultural requirements as well as safety and security standards.

The decision by the IFAB, which governs the rules of professional soccer, was intended to open opportunity to a large number of observant Muslim women who had been excluded from a professional career because of what they saw as a conflict between the rules of their faith and the rules of the game.

The conservatism is most deep-seated in Saudi Arabia, home to Wahhabism, one of the world's most puritan and restrictive interpretations of Islam that allows women to travel abroad only with the permission of a male guardian and bans them from driving. The kingdom, under threat of exclusion from the London Olympics if it fails to field women athletes and pressured by human rights groups has responded publicly with a series of test balloons on how to respond.

Saudi officials first leaked a story earlier this year about a plan to build the kingdom’s first stadium especially designed to accommodate women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014. Saudi media subsequently reported that the plan had been shelved.

Deputy education minister for female student affairs  Noura al-Fayez said in two letters addressed to Human Rights Watch that the government was working to set up a “comprehensive physical education programme”, including sports facilities and a health and nutrition awareness scheme “as part of its national strategy for physical education for boys and girls”, according to the daily al-Watan newspaper. Ms. Al-Fayez said physical education for girls was under consideration “as one of the priorities of the ministry's leadership”.

The letters didn’t stop Human Rights Watch from accusing Saudi Arabia in a report of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.

The kingdom’s toothless Shura or Advisory Council moreover issued regulations for women's sports clubs, but conservative religious forces often have the final say in whether they are implemented or not. Saudi Arabia’s official sports body, the General Presidency of Youth Welfare, presided by a member of the royal family, Prince Nawaf Bin Faisal, only caters to men. As a result, the kingdom last year hired a consultant to develop its first national sports plan - for men only.

Al Hayat newspaper, owned by a Saudi royal, reported last month that Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud had approved plans to send female athletes to the London Olympics. That report was quickly squashed with the media quoting Prince Nayef as reversing his statement.

Prince Nawaf subsequently went a step further by telling a news conference: “Female sports activity has not existed (in the kingdom) and there is no move thereto in this regard. At present, we are not embracing any female Saudi participation in the Olympics or other international championships.”

Despite Saudi women in the kingdom pushing the envelope by forming private clubs of their own, Prince Nawaf asserted that the demand for women’s participation came from Saudi women living abroad. He said the kingdom would work to ensure that expatriate Saudi women seeking to compete in the Olympics on their own account rather than as official delegates would do so “in the appropriate framework and comported with Islamic law.” He said he was working with the Saudi mufti and religious scholars to guarantee that nothing “infringed upon the Muslim woman.”

Saudi Arabia adopted a similar approach at the Youth Olympics in 2010 where Saudi equestrian participated without official endorsement and won a bronze medal in show jumping. It was not immediately clear whether the approach would this time be sufficient to remove the IOC’s threat of excluding the kingdom from the Olympics.

The evident debate about women’s rights to sports is part of a far broader discussion about the position of women in Saudi society. In an unusually frank interview with the BBC, Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz lambasted the kingdom’s discriminatory policies and called for the drafting of a constitution that would treat men and women equally as well as sweeping reforms, including “abusive” divorce laws, an education system that teaches “that a woman's position in society is inferior” and "that the angels will curse her if she is not submissive to her husband's needs," and a social affairs ministry that “is tolerating cruelty towards women rather than protecting them.”

To be sure the conservatism that inhibits women’s rights has support among conservative segments of the Middle East and North Africa’s female population. Three Emirate women, have launched, according to a report in The National, a behind closed doors soccer league in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the far more liberal UAE alongside the country’s national women’s team because they had no opportunity to play in an environment that banned men.

"There are some girls that don't mind playing in front of men. But there is a huge percentage of Emirati women who can't play in front of men because of cultural reasons. Those in the community who want to play the sport after university don't have a place to go. It's all open and there isn't really a place for the sport to be developed," said government employee Mariam Al Omaira, a founding partner of Irada (Determination) Sports Development Company.

The league has 84 players spread over six teams.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Israel arrests Palestinian soccer players

Arrested Palestine Olympic soccer team goalkeeper Omar Abu Rois (Source: Israel Defense Force)

By James M. Dorsey

Israeli security forces have arrested the goalkeeper of the Palestinian Olympic soccer team on charges of involvement in a shoot-out with Israeli troops, according to the Israeli military.

Palestinian soccer officials said the arrest of 23 year-old Omar Abu Rois, an alleged member of Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, was followed the next day by the detention of Ahmad Khalil Ali Abu El-Asal a player for the Aqabat Jaber Palestinian refugee camp soccer team.

The military said Mr. Abu Rois was one of 13 people arrested following an attack on Israeli troops in January in the Al Amari Palestinian refugee camp near the West Bank town of Ramallah. The military charged that the group had fired Kalashnikovs that had been provided by the head of security for the local branch of the Red Crescent, Palestine’s equivalent of the Red Cross. The security chief, Monastery Abbas, was among those detained. Mr. Abu Rois, according to the military, is a Red Crescent employee.

The military said the shooting occurred on January 20. It said no one was hurt in the incident but that an Israeli vehicle had been damaged. It said that interrogation of the detainees had revealed that Mr. Abu Rois had prepared the weapons used in the attack a day after the incident for return to a monastery where they had originally been stashed. It said the group had planned further attacks on several Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.

In a letter to world soccer body FIFA president Sepp Blatter copied to Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Zhang Jilong and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacque Rogue, Palestine Football Association (PFA) president Jibril Rajoub, a former Palestinian security chief, said Mr. Abu Rois was arrested on February 20 and Mr. El-Asal on February 21 in what he described as “another Israeli transgression against Palestinian players.” Mr. Rajoub said the two players had been “abducted” by Israeli occupation authorities.

PFA officials did not respond to questions about the background and possible political affiliations and activities of the two detained players.

Mr. Rajoub said Mr. Abou Rois had been arrested at work and taken to an unknown location while Mr. El-Asal was detained at his home.

The Palestinian soccer boss asked Mr. Blatter to intervene on behalf of the two players, charging that it “was in total disregard of all agreements signed by the Israeli side and in direct violation to the simplest right of our players.”

In an emailed response, FIFA official Guy-Phillipe Mathieu said FIFA would take “adequate steps.”

Mr. Rajoub, who also heads the Palestinian Olympic Committee, last year reached with the help of the IOC agreement with his counterparts at the Israeli soccer association and Olympic committee on ways to overcome Israeli security obstacles facing Palestinian players and athletes. They agreed to set up a telephone hotline so that Israeli sports bodies could intervene to ease the movement of Palestinian athletes, coaches, and officials if and when they encountered problems at checkpoints or in requests to travel.

The effort however has so far produced limited results. Palestinian officials say that FIFA shipments are often still delayed at Ben Gurion Airport customs, which incurs storage and other costs that can amount to a multi-fold of the value of the goods shipped.

Nonetheless, there has been a limited improvement in athletes' ability to move around the West Bank or between the Palestine Authority-controlled region and the Gaza Strip. "The problem is the Israeli committee is not the relevant authority for the movement of people and equipment. We are trying, but I don't want to embarrass anyone," Mr. Rajoub said in an interview last year, suggesting that the Israeli sports body had little sway with security authorities.

Mr. Rajoub as well as other soccer officials and players conceded however that crossing checkpoints had become somewhat easier. They attributed this primarily to improved security with Israel less concerned about the threat of terrorist attacks being launched from the West Bank. In addition, the PFA has created sleeping quarters in the Faisal Hussein Stadium so that players can get together to train without worrying whether they will be able to return home.

The easing of travel has meant that the Palestinian team has been able to host and travel for Olympic and World Cup qualifiers even though it failed to qualify for this year’s London Olympics. That is in stark contrast to 2007 when FIFA forced the Palestinians to forfeit a World Cup qualifier to Singapore because they failed to field a full team after Israel denied permits to 18 players and officials from Gaza.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.