The Muslim News - Muslim countries games ban

Issue 178, Friday 27 February 2004 - 6 Muharram 1425

Muslim countries games ban

By Sarah Sheriff

Atlanta Plus, a European feminist group whose founding members were outraged at seeing ‘few’ Muslim women participating in the 1992 Olympic Games as part of their country’s teams, has re-launched a campaign to have Muslim countries which do not send female participants to the Games, banned.
In the run up to the Athens Olympics, it is particularly targeting Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States but has also been critical of Iran, which does have a long tradition of sending Muslim women to the Olympics and has been the fore-runner in eliciting female participation in international sport in the Olympics and through the organisation of the International Islamic Women’s Games. Proponents of the Games point to the success of the initiative in kick-starting women’s sports in Muslim countries.
Speaking about the campaign by Atlanta Plus, Anne Marie Lizim, former Minister for European Affairs in Belgium and one of the founder members, said it was unacceptable that countries such as Saudi Arabia should bar women from participation in sports. Denying racism and Islamophobia, Atlanta Plus says it wants Muslim countries which do not have female athletes as part of their teams at the Olympics to be barred on the same grounds that saw South Africa banned from participation during the apartheid years. They say that there is sex discrimination in the targetted Muslim countries and this is just as contravening of the Olympic Charter as the apartheid policies of South Africa were.
Its criticism of Iran stems from the view that it allegedly “forces” women to wear “veils” to participate. Iran also irked Lizim, because its delegation to the Barcelona Games refused to walk behind inappropriately dressed young Spanish women flag bearers - an attitude which in turn has opened the feminists to the charge of cultural imperialism, Islamophobia and racism. Though fellow founding member Ms Weill-Curiel, a French feminist and nuclear scientist, has been quoted as saying, “If Iranians, for instance, want to practise sport in a certain way in Iran, I have nothing to say”.
In actual fact their stigmatisation of Muslims extends beyond the barring of women from participation in international elite sporting activities to criticism of the way in which practising Muslim women dress when they participate (with full covering and scarves).
They have also been critical of the International Islamic Women’s Games even though her initiative has done more than any other to create a ground-swell of women’s participation in sport across the Muslim world including some of the Gulf States which will send Muslim women to participate in the
Islamic Games for the first time in 2005.

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