2012 Olympics the Year of Muslim Women

 TMO 

By Karin Friedemann, TMO

The 2012 Olympics promises to be an exciting year for Muslim women athletes as well as anyone and  everyone who enjoys debating women’s rights issues. There is controversy, there are lovely ladies, and an observant public. We will probably be hearing a lot more from the media in the coming weeks.

Muslim women athletes are in many ways stuck between a rock and a hard place: between a religious orthodoxy that generally frowns upon young women being seen in the public eye and the West, which frowns upon the covering of women.

The pressure is on, as Human Rights Watch has suggested that if Saudi Arabia will not support the participation of women in the Olympics, the Olympics should not support the participation of Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabian newscaster Reema Abdullah has been chosen as one of the torch-bearers at the 2012 London Games.

The big fuss over Muslim women’s participation in the Olympics invites the question of why more Muslim women do not participate in sports.

Farah Jassat reports in the Guardian, UK: Cultural barriers to participation were recently highlighted in Saudi Arabia, when the country refused to allow Saudi women to compete in the Olympics. The institutional barrier, by contrast, can be seen in International Federation of Association Football ban on women wearing hijab. The Iranian women’s football team could not complete their 2012 Olympic second-round qualifying match against Jordan because they refused to remove their headscarves.

Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation, based in the UK, strongly believes that faith and sport for both genders are entirely compatible and that the culture of sport is an essential part of Islamic history. Since its establishment in 2001 MWSF has been at the forefront of encouraging physical activity amongst women from British ethnic-minority communities. Offering female only athletic sessions has helped to address cultural sensitivities and provide opportunities where more Muslim women feel comfortable in enjoying sport. MWSF even allows mothers to bring their kids along to training sessions.

This leads us to an important point: Participation of women of any age in physical fitness, regardless of religion, is often curtailed by childcare responsibilities. This is most unfortunate, since the only way for women to “reclaim” their bodies after childbirth is through regular physical exercise. American researchers report that the main obstacle to female exercise is sheer exhaustion from raising children and keeping house, in addition to earning income. There is no way for a mother to attend an aerobics class, run a few blocks, or even go into a private room to do some stretches unless at least one family member is willing to step up to take care of the children for some time to support the desire of the mother to get some exercise. Even those families who cite their total dependence on the mother as their reason for her lack of privacy should be aware that she is likely to be around a lot longer if she has access to some free time to work out.

Salma Bi, a cricketer and umpire believes “the main challenge is the support of the family.”

“It is much harder to excel in anything if your loved ones don’t understand why it’s important to you,” notes Jassat.

MWSF’s International Sportswoman of the Year, Ibtihaj Muhammad is an American sabre fencer who has made the last two US World Championship teams and ranked second in the US. She hopes to be the first Muslim woman representing the US in the Olympics in any sport whilst wearing hijab. Although she has said it is “extremely difficult being different in the sports world – be it for religion or race…” she also concludes, “I would never fence if it compromised who I am and my religion – I love that the two work together.”

Another bright shining star hopeful is the Malaysian rifle shooter Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, who will be well into her pregnancy at the time of her Olympic competition. She will be the fourth woman to compete in the Olympics while pregnant. The first was Swedish figure skater Magda Julin in 1920, the second was German skeleton racer Diane Sartor in 2006 and the third was Kristie Moore, a Canadian curler in 2010.

Suryani told Reuters, “I feel I am strong and my husband says ‘as long as you feel like that, energized to do that, it seems like that is your baby talking to you so you go.’” Malaysia’s best shooter will however not be competing in the 50m competition, even though she achieved the qualifying marks. “Yeah, I cannot do a prone position with this big stomach,” she said.

The accomplishments of Muslim women athletes are guaranteed to be a source of inspiration for the wider community, states David Bernstein, President of Level Playing Field and Chair of the Centre for Access to Football in Europe.

The world is watching, regardless of anyone’s opinion on the matter.

The best we can hope for is that our sisters will make us proud with their excellent performances at the 2012 Olympics, because no matter how they rank in their sport, they are showing us what is possible in this decade of history.

White, European and Endangered: Is the Caucasian Race Dying?

Khaleej Times


Demographic predictions of increasing de-Europeanisation are becoming realised in playgrounds throughout America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Some call this creeping multiculturalism “a Genocide against the White race.” While globalist strategy does appear to undermine local social cohesion first by encouraging immigration and then by whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria, such analysis ignores personal choice. White people have not been reproducing at replacement levels.

“Around the time that President Kennedy went to Germany and gave his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, Europe represented 12.5 per cent of the world’s population. Today it is 7.2 per cent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 per cent of the world will be European,” states Russell Shorto in the New York Times.

“We start to wonder about our identity at the moment when we are about to lose it,” notes Tom Sunic in the Occidental Observer, but the Pan-European identity is something quite new in history.

“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanise us instead of our Anglifying them?” Benjamin Franklin complained in 1751.

“In the early 20th century, federal immigration officials classified the Irish, Italians, and Jews as separate races. Yet today all these groups are viewed collectively, and benignly, as ‘white,’” writes Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.

Yet White identity has largely been defined collectively as the opposite of benign because it comes with the historical baggage of Southern Slavery, Segregation, Apartheid, and Colonialism. Throughout the Western world and its former colonies legal systems had separate laws for Whites and non-Whites. Even when such discrimination has been eliminated from codes, complaints persist of unfair enforcement and unequal protection alongside continuing structural inequalities.

“Whiteness” has been used as a weapon against non-Whites by the bankers and proprietors of capital to prevent working class solidarity, while simultaneously White Christian middle and upper classes have been subjected to decades of what Prof. Kevin MacDonald calls the “culture of critique emanating from the most prestigious academic and media institutions.”

Blogger Christian Lander summarises: “As a straight white male, I’m the worst thing on earth.”

In college I actually told my American history professor, “I wish I could rip my skin off.”

Jews are always exempt from collective White Guilt as their involvement in Bolshevik massacres, the American slave trade, and the conquest of Palestine is never mentioned at any level of the US public educational system while the Holocaust is taught starting in Kindergarten.

Although White Christians have been demonised as the Oppressor class, poverty is not specific to race in the United States. Representative Cynthia McKinney in a Congressional report concerning Hurricane Katrina points out: “In the greater New Orleans area, 65,000 minority residents lived in poverty before Katrina, compared with 
85,000 whites.”

Sinister plots to reduce non-white populations and sometimes white Muslim populations through promotion of birth control, instigating warfare, starvation and disease have however constituted a recurring feature of international politics.

In 1974, the US National Security Council under Henry Kissinger released a memorandum on the “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth” claiming that population growth in Lesser Developed Countries was a dangerous threat to US national security.

It has even become popular to view mass death as something positive. Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund said, “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels,” according to a 1995 American Policy Center report.

Neoconservative commentator Mark Steyn writes in America Alone, “If you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ‘em.”

Likewise, abortion has been promoted as a way of reducing the population of the poor. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and member of the Eugenics Society wrote in 1922: “Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly… Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilisation are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born.”

Despite disproportionate use by African Americans of abortion services, their birth rate remains higher than replacement level while European Americans' population continues to decline.

Similar disparities exist in Europe. In 2005, 64,000 children were born in Norway of two foreign-born parents in comparison with only 13,800 children born to native Norwegian parents. Immigration in combination with higher non-European birth rates has resulted in projected transformation of majorities into minorities.

Journalist Eric Walberg blames the downfall of Europe on neoliberalism while author Michael Hoffman blames moral degeneracy. “The non-reproducing (i.e. self-exterminating) Whites of Europe and America live for luxury.”

Yet, Europeans have always been a global minority. Even pre-Christian Romans often recommended later marriage as a display of patience and chastity while in other cultures women typically produced their first baby at 14 or 15. In the 17th century, advances in medicine and hygiene resulted in increasing European populations. Other nations are now catching up.

Those who are panicked about disappearing European Christian culture should strive to address the socio-economic and emotional factors that discourage those of European ancestry from 
having children.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based political analyst. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women