Saudi ban on women in sports is shocking

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Spring's here, but it's hard to be hopeful when another International Women's Day has been ushered in among the challenges that women continue to face.

But what really riled me last week was an article tucked into the sports section. Apparently there are subversive elements among Saudi womanhood - the "shameless girls" who, as intrepid members of the Jeddah United women's basketball team, just want to dribble down the court and shoot hoops.

I read this shocking item after a long day at work during which I repeated the unglamorous preventive health drill that we can all recite in our sleep: coaxing, cajoling and counselling recalcitrant couch potatoes to heave their sluggish bodies into the vertical position to walk, run or bike. Whatever it takes for their sclerotic arteries to reverse the inexorable slide towards a heart attack or stroke is fine with me.

Waiting for my daughter at the pool, I was struck by the sage advice from the Supreme Council of Religious Scholars who justified the ban on sports for women because "it will lead to following in the footsteps of the devil." To prevent such moral decline, there are no gym facilities for girls at Saudi state schools, nor is teaching physical education permissible.

The real clincher comes from a cleric who refuses to be coy. He explains that the excessive "movement and jumping" that characterizes vigorous sport might cause hymenal tears and compromise girl's virginity. Ah, there we have it. The steadfast quest to control women's bodies.

Recall the dearth of women in sport across history. The ancient Olympics must have been a stirring spectacle but women were absent - classical Greeks even reserved citizenship for men.

Women have been kept off playing fields forever because of notions of female frailty. The rough and tumble of the physical realm is simply inconsistent with womanly dignity. Finally, the idea of women moving for the simple joy of sport - the exhilaration of diving into a blue jewel of a lake on a July day, the sublime agony of reaching the pinnacle of a mountain, surrounded by the majesty of silent peaks - the experiences which make the heart dance and the spirit soar - these moments are merely hammer blows eroding the mystique of female purity.

Hogwash.

These baseless arguments are simply code for control. Let common sense prevail over common nonsense. Exercise is a cure for just about anything that ails the human body or spirit. Until its benefits can be transformed into pill form, I'll keep proselytizing for physical activity.

Here's to Jeddah United - keep your hoop dreams. To sorrowful sheiks everywhere, my daughter passed her exam - she's officially a lifeguard.

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