FIFA helping violate human rights
Op-ed: In its decision to allow head covers during matches, football's governing body helps perpetuate women's subjugation to men in Muslim world.
The new regulation is intended for the Muslim world, and will allow women to play soccer with any head cover, starting from a veil to a hijab and, who knows, one day it will be the burqa's turn too. These are not just head covers – they sometimes cover much more than just the head. Their goal is to completely hide the woman's body from the man's gaze in the Muslim world.
One may say that the choice of clothing is every woman's private and personal right, but not in many places. Places where the hijab and similar head covers have become symbols – a symbol of man's control over woman in the radical religious world, of her being the private property of the man, who will decide what she wears, how and when, and of her complete surrender to him.
FIFA's decision was made after a two-year trial and error, they say. It looks like the research was not so thorough. If FIFA had really done its research, it would have discovered that in Algeria, like in other countries, there have been reports of women being killed just because they failed to wear a veil on the street.
Had they done some research, they would surely know that in Afghanistan, for example, there is still a "religious police," whose job it is to enforce the wearing of the hijab under the law. They would have found that there are still regimes which enforce women's boundaries. That in Tunisia, female teachers threatened their female students that if they fail to put on the hijab – they will be beaten up.
And FIFA agreed to all this in an attempt to suck up to Muslim countries again (Qatar 2022, anyone?) Such a huge global organization cooperating with intolerant opinions crushing human rights. Because, after all, it's obvious that a woman wearing a hijab does it out of her own free will, right?
What about kippa?
And what about a Jewish man wearing a skullcap? It's every person's right to do as he pleases. Luckily, we are still living in a free country (at least in wide parts of it). But there are two problems:
1. When religion enters sports, it is joined by politics. Instead of 11 footballers running on the field in a homogenous color with the same shirt, there will suddenly be identification signs which will turn sports into something a lot less simple.
2. The hitchhikers – those who will place a kippa in a sweaty sock or in their underwear so that they can kiss it after a goal, as if it respects religion. Those who will drive their car to the soccer field on Shabbat, but will play with a kippa just so they can hear the traditional audience applauding loudly.
And yet, everyone has the right to do as they please. That was FIFA's ruling.
