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The debate about the hijab (headscarf) and what place it has in the athletic arena for Muslim female athletes is a fairly new one, and one that the International Sports Federations (IF) have been forced to address in recent years as more young Muslim women around the world choose to participate in athletics. Yet, with that increase also comes controversy as sports governing bodies are forced to evaluate their own rules in order to determine if wearing a hijab is acceptable in their game, and how they, as an international governing body, can find a middle ground that both respects the rules of the game while also respecting the player's right to cover.
The article highlights a recent decision made by football's international governing body, International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), to ban an Iranian girls' youth national soccer team from an international tournament and analyzes the broader policy implications of that decision, with the intention of providing a constructive method of approach toward resolving future decisions should the need arise, as it seems, it inevitably will.
Introduction
The inaugural Youth Olympic Games, sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), took place in August 2010 in Singapore and, according to the Games' site, saw over 3,500 athletes from more than seventeen countries compete in various sporting events. But what was to be a tournament exhibiting the Olympic values of "excellence, friendship and respect" became tainted with controversy months before the opening ceremony.
In April 2010, FIFA banned the Iranian girls' youth national soccer team from competing in the Games, citing two rules that prohibit the hijab from being worn during all FIFA sanctioned games.
The two rules cited from FIFA's current 2010-2011 rule book in support of the ban were:
* Advertising on Equipment: "Basic compulsory equipment must not have any political, religious, or personal statement" and
* Safety: "A player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to himself or another player."1
While both rules were added to FIFA's 2007-2008 rulebook and have remained there since, only recently-three years later-were they implemented more strictly to ban, for the first time, an entire team of Muslim players who wear the hijab. Previously, there was a case in 2007 in which an...