World Cup Item: Islam and The Ball

The soccer players who are Muslim in the World Cup are to be congratulated.

They have won out over radical, fundamentalist Islamism.

If you go here, you'll learn that

On August 25, 2005, anonymous radical Islamist clerics published in the Saudi daily newspaper al-Watan, an anti-soccer fatwa (ruling)...The fatwa declared that soccer is permissible to play only when its rules are different from the accepted international rules. The ruling is based on a hadith (prophetic tradition) which forbids Muslims to imitate Christians and Jews...one should "not set the number [of players] according to the number of players used by the non-believers", and thus, only a larger or smaller number than eleven players can play together...

There's more there.



(Kippah tip: BC)


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