Soccer is Forbidden Except When Played as Training for Jihad

More zaniness from The Religion Of Peace®.

I've been reading about this at the Anti-Idiotarian Rotweiler and the Ace Of Spades HQ, but when I saw it at MEMRI I decided that this lunacy has to have a bit of fact about it and it's more than just an urban legend.

One of the anti-soccer fatwas was published in full in Al-Watan on August 25, 2005. According to other sources it had been issued by Sheikh 'Abdallah Al-Najdi.

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 states, among other things:

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.

Then there is "Islamically correct" soccer. It must be read to be believed.

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.'

3. If one of you falls during the game and breaks his hand or his foot, or if the ball hits his hand, he shall not say 'foul' and shall not stop playing because of his injury. The one who caused his injury shall not receive a yellow or a red card, but rather the case shall be judged according to Muslim law in the case of a broken bone or an injury. The injured player shall exercise his rights according to the shari'a, as [is stated] in the Koran, and you must testify together with him that so-and-so tripped him up intentionally.

Uh, you've got to be kidding me. If there is a foul, if one player trips another another player then the one that got tripped must follow the shari'a and a trial must ensue to provide remedies to the player that got tripped. A special crack teams of imams will be kept at the ready during the game, so that they may convene a sharia court immediately. Stones for use after a verdict has been passed will be distributed at the entrance to the stadium.

7. Do not play for 45 minutes, as is the practice among the Jews, the Christians, and in all of the countries of non-belief and atheism. This is also the length of time that is accepted in the soccer clubs of those who have strayed from the righteous path. You must be different than the non-believers, depart from their path, and not imitate them in anything.

8. Do not play in two parts [i.e. halves], but rather in one part or in three parts, so as to be different than the sinful and rebellious, the non-believers and the polytheists.

There appears to be an obsessive paranoia that one of their soccer players, when actually playing a regulation 45 minutes or playing a regulation half, will be somehow become sinful and rebellious or might stray from the righteous path. I would think that there are clinical psychiatric phrases that describe this type of behavior.

11. In the course of the game it is forbidden for groups of youth to gather and watch, since if you are gathering for the sake of sports activity and physical fitness, as you claim, why should they be looking at you? You must make them participate [in order to improve] their physical fitness and prepare for jihad; or else say to them, 'Go propagate Islam and seek out moral corruption in the marketplaces and in the press [in order to correct it], and leave us to improve our physical fitness.'

Wow. No fans in the bleachers. Either you hop down to the field and play or you run off and propagate Islam. This is going to be especially hard on those trying to sell those expensive season tickets, huh?

13. If one of you inserts the ball between the posts and then starts to run so that his companions will run after him and hug him, like the players in America and France do, you should spit in his face, punish him, and reprimand him, for what do joy, hugging, and kissing have to do with sports?

Now those wacky sheikhs are even complaining about the French and their joy, hugging, and kissing. I guess a friendly pat on the rump would be especially heinous.

When you have lunatics issuing these types of commands you begin to understand how the upcoming generation of Muslims can embody such a twisted and mutated faith. All of the above commands come from an obesessive hatred of anything and anyone non-Muslim. It may be based on Muhammad's hadith that "whosoever imitates a group of people becomes one of them", but it adds the emotion of hate in order to create the fatwa.

One billion people in the world are tyrannized by a paranoid and hateful thought-system promulgated by maniacs that, were it not termed "one of the world's great religions," would be deemed a psychiatric condition.

Says Ace from Ace Of Spades blog:

This isn't religion. This is a worldwide pandemic of extreme-feelings-of-inadequacy-and-cultural-inferiority metastized into full-blown mental illness which expresses itself through the superficial vehicle of "religion."

The Muslim world has an enormous chip on its shoulder -- 700 years of political and technological failure can't be good for one's ego -- and they seem to be stressing the one thing they have that others don't -- Islam.

A culture forever on the lookout for heretics, infidels, and scapegoats is not a culture that has an awful lot positive going for it.