Saudi Girls Are Doing Something Radical: Playing Sports

by:Bob Cook,

In my area of the United States, Muslim girls play sports, with or without wearing a hijab. The only contentious issue regarding Muslim girls on my 6-year-old daughter’s T-ball team last year was whether the post-game snack was halal. My 12-year-old daughter’s junior high basketball team had Muslim players, part of a team that collectively spoke five languages: English, Spanish, Arabic, Polish, and text. But in Saudi Arabia, the idea of Muslim girls playing sports is a radical concept in Saudi Arabia, where a conservative interpretation of Islam means women should not exercise, lest they, as one cleric put it in 2009, risk losing their virginity by tearing their hymens. Really. In a reverse of how it goes in the United States, private schools, more free from religious requirements, have let girls play sports, but state-run schools, which are under religious requirements, officially ban them. But one state-run school is flouting that ban. From Reuters: A girls’ school in Saudi Arabia has defied a religious ban on female sports by erecting basketball hoops and letting pupils play at break-time, the daily al-Watan reported … . The school in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province has now become the first state-run girls school openly to encourage sports, Watan reported, quoting a supervisor as saying it would expend pupils’ energy “in a positive way.” … “The school administration is hoping to instill the importance of sports among the students and introduce them to its benefits, as well as allowing them to spend their spare time doing something beneficial,” Amina Bu Bsheit, a school supervisor, was quoted as saying by Watan. She added that the school, which was not named in Watan’s report, still does not provide a physical education class but that the students play during weekly “activities classes.” How did the school get so brave to defy convention? In part, because world pressure on Saudi Arabia’s retrograde attitude on women — include Human Rights Watch’s call Saudi Arabia be banned from the 2012 Olympics for having no women athletes — is causing King Abdullah to, slowly and slightly, loosen restrictions on Saudi women. King Abdullah in 2011 allowed women to vote and run for office in municipal elections, and he has called for more education and employment opportunities for them. Despite the apparent risk of inadvertently losing their virginity, women are getting involved in sports clubs in Saudi Arabia, to the point that al-Watan — which is owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, by the way — also has reported that the country is considering forming a ministerial committee to consider the possibility of making those clubs legal. Again, from Reuters: Abdullah al-Zamil, a senior official from the General Presidency of Youth Welfare, the top Saudi sporting body, said the committee was being formed to end the “chaos” surrounding women’s sports clubs, which are effectively unregulated, Watan reported. The General Presidency of Youth Welfare only regulates male clubs and its head was recently quoted saying he would not endorse Saudi women athletes at the 2012 Olympics. Before we in the modern Western world get too smug about how Saudi Arabia treats its women — which is deplorable — we should realize that women were denied athletic opportunities in the United States not all that long ago, that it took federal law to get schools and organizations committed to girls’ athletics in any wide-ranging way, and that there are still Christians in this country that believe it is an affront to God for girls to play sports.