The Saudi daily Al-Watan reported recently that Islamic extremists were inciting Saudi soccer players to quit their teams and wage jihad in Iraq. According to these reports, the young athletes were influenced by fatwas forbidding the game of soccer except when played under certain conditions and with the express intention of using the game as physical training for jihad. Saudi sheikhs and intellectuals have criticized the fatwas and the religious authorities that issued them.
Al-Watan reported that the soccer players involved in this affair were from the Al-Taif region, and that some of them belonged to the region's well-known Al-Rashid team. In another article, Al-Rashid captain Ja'far 'Attas said that three of his players had left the team. A few days later, team members confirmed that the three had become devout and, under the influence of various fatwas , had begun to believe that soccer was forbidden by religious law.
One of the three, Majid Al-Sawat, was arrested while planning to carry out a suicide bombing in Iraq. He appeared on Al-Iraqiya TV four months ago, claiming that he had fallen victim to one of the groups which take those who come to Iraq and hold them against their will in order to make them commit acts of terrorism.
One of the anti-soccer fatwas was published in full in Al-Watan on August 25, 2005. It is very long and we will not reproduce it in full, but the opening section gives the tone. The fatwa declared that it is only permissible to play soccer when its rules are different than the accepted international rules. This was based on a hadith [Prophetic tradition] which forbids Muslims to imitate Christians and Jews. The fatwa read:
1. Don't play soccer with four lines [surrounding the field], since this is the way of the non-believers, and the international soccer rules require drawing [these lines] before playing.
2. One should not use the terminology established by the non-believers and the polytheists, like: 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick,' 'goal,' and 'out of bounds.' Whoever pronounces these terms should be punished, reprimanded, kicked out of the game, and should even be told in public: 'You have come to resemble the non-believers and the polytheists, and this has been forbidden.'
The Saudi authorities were quick to rebut these claims. Sheikh 'Abd Al-Muhsin Al-'Abikan, an advisor in the Saudi Justice Department, said that soccer is permitted so long as various shari'a prohibitions are not violated. According to him, the interpretation concerning the 'rules of the game and the prohibition against using terms such as "foul", "penalty kick" etc. is misguided, since even the Prophet Muhammad used non-Arabic expressions in the hadith, and even Allah used some non-Arabic words in His book [the Koran]. Therefore there is nothing wrong with occasionally using a language that is not [the language] of the Arabs, and this is not considered imitation [of the non-believers].
What is more, 'There is nothing wrong with the lines [surrounding the field], the referee, and the soccer rules. All things that come from the West but are not unique to it are permitted. Soccer has become a world sport and does not belong only to the non-believers. The conditions that some people have established in order to distinguish [Muslims] from non-believers are extreme and derive from a lack of understanding of the shari'a and the literature of religious law.' Al-'Abikan also warned young people not to heed fatwas of this kind and recommended that they approach senior religious authorities and ask them to issue fatwas on important issues like these.
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