The restoring of “order” by the Islamic courts in Somalia recalls the Restoration of Order after the supposed chaos and confusion (otherwise known as life itself, so damn messy without the Ordnung of the Totalitarian State) of the Weimar Republic. Watching of sports — strengst verboten. Playing of sports, also haram, unless participation in them is related to skills needed for Jihad. Here is how Al-Qaradawi, in his widely-read “The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam” (Al-Halal wal Haram fil Islam) puts it:
“There are many kinds of games and sports which the Prophet (peace be on him) recommended to the Muslims as a source of enjoyment and recreation which, at the same time, prepare them for worship and other obligations. These sports, which require skill and determination, and which also involve physical exercise and body-building activity, are related to the amrtial arts, training Muslims for the battlefields of jihad in the cause of Allah. Among them are the following.”
Al-Qaradawi then goes on to mention foot racing, wrestling (Abdullah’s sport at Deerfield), archery, spear play (not yet a varsity sport), and hunting (all those rich Arabs who go bustard-hunting in Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia, consistently ignoring all the laws designed to conserve certain species). Even paintball, if it improves one’s aim (a skill that could be transferred to guns) would — as a substitute encouraging the same skills — would be okay.
Soccer? Well, in order to justify the soccer teams of Muslim states, Muslim clerics have apparently decided that soccer can be justified because improving one’s general physical fitness, or honing one’s “strategic” skills, might be interpreted — and would have to be to meet the demands of Muslim clerics — as being transferable to Jihad. The same would naturally apply to the Pakistani cricket team. When English gentlemen exclaimed “Well bowled, Anthony Ashley Cooper!” (a queer little chap I knew in London, in the days of the Yellow Book and the Café Royale), little did they know that they were appreciating a sport that prepared for war.
But of course one supposes the Muslims would argue something like “Well, don’t you Christians do exactly the same? Wasn’t it some Christian general who said the war against Napoleon was won on the playing-fields of Eton”? And as always, this kind of thing will confuse the Infidels. They will not be able to spot the difference between the supposed character-building of sports and the quite different view in Islam, which is that if something cannot be related to the aims of Islam, if it cannot be made part of the Total System of Islam, then it is haram, not halal, and must be forbidden. In contrast, that character-building used to be regarded in the same manner in which the study of the classics was supposed to prepare England’s leaders for the responsibilities of rule (as Balliol””not to be unduly confused with Borstal — boys in the mid-to-late 19th century would have been taught to believe): it was not used to justify the activities, but was merely an observation upon them.
If Saudi Arabia’s clerics permit the fielding of a Saudi soccer team, it is only because the argument has been accepted that the improvement of physical fitness by Muslim youth (with the late Sheik Bin Baz doing his impersonation of Baden-Powell) makes one better able, should the need arise, to personally participate in violent Jihad. But making the case for watching soccer is a much harder one, and apparently the Somali Enforcers of Islam, those Horn-of-Africa versions of the Saudi mutawwa, remained adamant. Watching soccer does nothing to prepare for the Jihad.
The Enforcers of Islamic Order know perfectly well what soccer stadiums are for. They are not for watching soccer. They are, rather, for watching men being beaten half-to-death if they dared to fly kites or sing at weddings in Afghanistan. They are places for killing Enemies of Islam and stoning to death, women accused of adultery (verdict first, trial afterwards; Red Queen’s rules apply), girls convicted of stolen kisses or worse.
And after the spectacle, just as at the end of some television programs in the Western world, the whole audience at the soccer stadium is invited to Come On Down. Come On Down, and participate in the fun. Stomp those corpses, smash them till those bones and flesh become one oozy puddle.
It happens in Afghanistan with islamized Afghanis, it happens in Bangladesh with Islamized Bengalis, it happens in Baghdad and Fallujah, in Gaza and the West Bank where Arabs, to the Muslim manner born, invite onlookers to come and kick and mutilate the bodies of those who have offended Islam, have somehow violated the Shari”a, the dream-goal of so many primitive Muslims, a goal that the “moderate” Muslims refuse to renounce because”¦. Well, because, how can they and still remain true to Qur’an and Sunnah?
Oriana Fallaci noted this also:
“To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered “Allah akbar, Allah akbar.–¦..After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–akbar, Allah–akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones.”