Exiled Afghan Women's Crusade To Play For Country’s National Football Team
New Age
Islam News Bureau
15 September 2023
·
Exiled
Afghan Women's Crusade To Play For Country’s National Football Team
·
Middle
Eastern Actress Yara Shahidi Hits Red Carpet For London Fashion Event
·
Arab Films
‘The Burdened,’ ‘Four Daughters’ Join Oscars Race
·
Guterres: Rights
Of Women, Girls In Afghanistan Central Concern Of UN
·
Pregnant
Afghan Who Worked With British Council Fears Deportation And Death At Hands Of Taliban
·
Why Is
France So Obsessed With Controlling Muslim Women's Bodies?
Compiled by
New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/exiled-afghan-football-crusade/d/130683
------
Exiled Afghan Women's Crusade To Play
For Country’s National Football Team
Khalida
Popal reunited with the Afghan women's national team in Australia this week to
attend the World Cup match in Brisbane on July 27, 2023.
Hilary
Whiteman/CNN
------
15.09.23
Juliet Macur
Khalida Popal, the former captain of the
Afghanistan women’s national football team, woke up on the floor of her
apartment near Copenhagen, Denmark, drenched in sweat and shaking.
She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An
ambulance rushed to her.
It was two years ago last month, and the
Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female football players on the
national team that Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the
country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.
Players were deluging Popal with
requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years,
much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to
participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.
The message was everything the Taliban
despised.
“I feel responsible for these girls,”
Popal said later. “I’d rather die than turn my back on them.”
So on that afternoon in 2021, Popal had
a panic attack and thought she might be dying. But in a show of her resilience,
she waved away the medical workers and returned to her desk to continue
coordinating an evacuation of players and their families from Kabul.
Relying on a network she built through
her activism, she helped rescue 87 people, including the senior national team.
Months later, an additional 130.
Now Popal is on another mission, one
that reached its height at this summer’s Women’s World Cup. She is trying to
persuade Fifa, football’s global governing body, to let players on the Afghan
women’s national team represent their country again after the Taliban barred
girls and women from playing sports.
The players, after escaping Afghanistan
with Popal’s help, are living in Australia, which hosted this year’s World Cup
with New Zealand. Although the team is competing for the Melbourne Victory
football club, Fifa refuses to recognise it as a national team because the
Afghanistan Football Federation claims it does not exist. Under the Taliban, no
women’s team does.
“These players dreamed of playing
football for Afghanistan, and men just came and took that dream from them,”
Popal said. “Fifa is saying, ‘We are sorry that you’ve lost your right to play
football, girls, when you have done nothing to deserve it.’ It’s disgusting.”
In an emailed statement, Fifa said it
cannot recognise a national team unless it is first acknowledged by its
national federation.
A spokesperson for the Afghanistan
Football Federation said the organisation could do nothing to help because the
women’s national team dissolved when the players fled the country — an
assertion the players reject.
Popal, 36, has been sharing the Afghan
team’s story with everyone she can. While working for Right to Dream, a
football non-profit, and Girl Power, her own non-profit, she organised a
petition, which has been signed by more than 175,000 people since published
online in late July.
More than 100 politicians endorsed a
letter she wrote to Fifa with Julie Elliott, a member of Britain’s Parliament,
and Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot in the head by
the Taliban when she was 15.
“Khalida is reminding the world that we
are still here, don’t forget us,” said FatiYousufi, the Afghan team’s captain
and goalkeeper. “I know a lot of us have said, ‘I want to be like Khalida one
day, a strong and powerful woman.’ ”
Anyone who wants to be like Popal should
understand that her advocacy for the Afghan team has come with serious
sacrifices.
“It has taken a huge toll on her,” said
Kelly Lindsey, an American whom Popal recruited to coach the Afghan national
team in 2016. “But she won’t stop for a moment to take care of herself.”
During the Taliban’s first reign, from
when Popal was age 9 to 14, she was stuck in a Pakistani refugee tent city,
with football as her only outlet. When her family returned to Kabul in 2002
after a US-led coalition drove out the Taliban, she was eager to grow the
sport.
Her mother, Shokria Popal, helped
recruit players, often contending with parents who called her a prostitute
trying to destroy the culture. From the Popals’ efforts, high school teams were
born. Five years later, the Afghanistan Football Federation accepted Khalida’s
team as the women’s national team.
The team first made national news in
2010 when it played Nato soldiers in Kabul. Speaking to journalists, Popal
denounced the Taliban. There was an immediate cost.
Some of her teammates were forced to
quit because their families hadn’t known that they were playing. Popal recalled
receiving death threats, including from one caller who said he would cut her to
pieces.
In 2011, Popal was working as the head
of finance and women’s football at the otherwise all-male federation when she
complained on national television that the women’s team wasn’t getting enough
support. She blamed corrupt sports officials for it.
Days later, she said, a truck rammed
into the car she was riding in. Uniformed men fired shots through the windows,
but she was not physically harmed. Then, when the Afghanistan Olympic
Committee’s headquarters were vandalized, Popal was among those blamed.
Although she denied involvement, police
issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours before the government barred her from
travelling, she boarded a plane to India.
Popal was on the run. Multiple times she
changed her phone number and her hotel, but threats found their way to her.
She made her way to Denmark after
sportswear company Hummel, the Afghan team’s sponsor, helped her apply for
asylum there.
In exile, Popal eventually volunteered
as the Afghan national team’s programme director, organising tournament
appearances and hiring coaches.
But even women who remained with the
team were not safe. In 2018, Popal saw federation officials sexually harassing
players at a training camp in Jordan. Players told her that they had been
sexually abused by those and other officials, including
Keramuddin Keram, who was the
federation’s president and a powerful politician. Popal reported what she had
heard, but for eight months Fifa officials did nothing, according to Popal and
Lindsey.
Popal persuaded 10 players to come
forward and obtained blueprints of the federation’s headquarters. That
paperwork showed Keram had a secret bedroom attached to his office where,
players told her, he beat and raped them.
Fifa eventually barred Keram from the
sport for life, and the Afghan courts punished him and four others.
News of the case reached other national
team players, including those in Haiti, Argentina, Canada and Venezuela. They
felt emboldened to speak up about sexual abuse committed by men in their sport,
said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, the general secretary of FIFPRO, the union for
professional football players that helped Popal with the abuse case.
“Khalida started a big wave,” he said. “She’s
changing the world.”
The Women’s World Cup was ending in a
day and Popal was eking out all the publicity she could get for the Afghan team
before the world stopped watching.
Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist,
helped with that.
After reading in The New York Times
about Fati Yousufi and the Afghan team, she wanted to meet the players and help
Popal in her efforts.
On a tiny indoor field, with about a
dozen television cameras present, Popal listened as Yousafzai and Yousufi gave
speeches. She took deep breaths and stared at the ground to fight back tears.
Yousafzai said Fifa needed to change its
regulations to let the team compete because playing a sport is a basic human
right.
“It is time for people to decide that
they are not standing on the Taliban’s side,” she said.
Yousufi was next.
“We are asking them to open the door,
open the door for our team, open the door for Afghanistan women,” she said,
referring to Fifa. “We don’t want to lose this opportunity.”
Popal never thought she would work
alongside someone with Yousafzai’s stature, or that players, like Yousufi,
would become forceful leaders worldwide.
“It’s so lonely and tiring to do this on
your own, which was what I did for a long time, but now I see that the new
generation gets it,” she said, choking up. “It’s not all on my shoulders
anymore.”
SafiullahPadshah contributed reporting
from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Source: telegraphindia.com
https://www.telegraphindia.com/sports/football/exiled-afghan-womens-crusade-to-play-for-country/cid/1966303
------
Middle Eastern Actress Yara Shahidi Hits
Red Carpet For London Fashion Event
Yara Shahidi
attended the second annual Vogue World event which kicks off London Fashion
Week. (Getty Images)
-----
ARAB NEWS
September 15, 2023
DUBAI: Part-Middle Eastern actress Yara Shahidi
turned heads this week as she hit the red carpet for a fashion event in London
on Thursday.
Shahidi attended the second annual Vogue
World event which kicks off London Fashion Week.
The “Grown-ish” star wore a deep purple
dress from British superstar and designer Victoria Beckham’s Fall/Winter 2023
ready-to-wear collection.
The event, which took place at the
Theatre Royal Drury Lane, was also attended by Canadian supermodel Winnie
Harlow, who posed on the red carpet wearing a black velvet gown with a voluminous
floor-length white cape by Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad.
The dress featured a plunging neckline
and Harlow topped off the look with black opera gloves and glitzy diamond
jewelry.
Shahidi and Harlow were joined by other
supermodels, acting legends and royalty including Rita Ora, Simone Ashley,
Princess Beatrice, Kate Moss, Cara Delevingne, AdwoaAboah, Ashley Graham, Poppy
Delevingne, Stella McCartney, Carey Mulligan and many more.
Sophie Okonedo, Stormzy, Sienna Miller,
Damien Lewis, James McAvoy and FKA twigs performed at the event.
London Fashion Week kicks off on Sept.
15 and will run until Sept. 19.
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2374151/lifestyle
------
Arab films ‘The Burdened,’ ‘Four
Daughters’ join Oscars race
September 15, 2023
DUBAI: Yemen has selected director Amr
Gamal’s “The Burdened” as its entry for the Oscars’ international feature film
award, while Tunisia is competing with Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters.”
This is Gamal’s second film to be
submitted to the Oscars. His romantic comedy “10 Days Before the Wedding” was
Yemen’s candidate in 2018.
Gamal’s 2023 movie had its world
premiere at this year’s Berlin Film Festival where it won several awards
including the Amnesty International Award and Panorama Audience Award.
Gamal’s film is based on a true story
that took place in Aden in 2019. It revolves around a couple, Isra’a and Ahmed,
who struggle to live a normal life and educate their three young children. When
Isra’a becomes pregnant, they have to make difficult decisions about the
family’s future.
Tunisian director Ben Hania’s
semi-documentary “Four Daughters” captures the story of OlfaHamrouni, whose two
daughters left to fight for Daesh.
The film was Ben Hania’s first entry —
and the only Arab one — for the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize this year.
The movie follows Hamrouni, who drew
international attention in 2016 after accusing Tunisian authorities of failing
to stop one of her daughters from traveling to Libya to fight for the militant
group. Hamrouni’s other daughter had already joined the group.
The film was supported by Saudi Arabia's
Red Sea Film Foundation.
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2374121/lifestyle
------
Guterres: Rights of Women, Girls in
Afghanistan Central Concern of UN
MitraMajeedy,
September 14, 2023
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
said in a press conference that the situation of the rights of women and girls
in Afghanistan will be an issue that “will be very much on the agenda” of the
seventy-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
World leaders will address the United
Nations General Assembly on September 18 and 19 in New York.
“The rights of women and girls in Afghanistan
is absolutely central to all concerns and will be one of the issues that will
be very much in the agenda,” Guterres noted.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate said that
women’s rights are ensured in Afghanistan within the framework of Islamic
principles.
The Islamic Emirate’s spokesperson,
Zabihullah Mujahid, asked the world to respect Islamic values in Afghanistan
and to not interfere in the country’s internal affairs.
"The issue of human rights is an
excuse that is used. In reality, the people of Afghanistan have rights given to
them by Sharia law. Nobody can show that someone else's rights have been
violated. All individuals have rights, including men, women, children, and the
elderly,” said Mujahid.
According to some university lecturers,
participation of all the citizens, including women, in the political sphere is
important.
“It is the responsibility of the
government to provide facilities for the people, provide services. We are like
the two wings of a bird in the society, and our sisters are the one wing. If we
want to have a developed society, we should provide the rights of work,
education and political participation,” said Zaki Mohammadi, a political
analyst.
Previously, the UN special rapporteur
for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, at the UN Human Rights Council called on the
“Taliban to reverse their draconian, misogynist policies and allow women to
work and run businesses, including delivering essential services through NGOs
and the UN.”
Speaking at the 54th Regular Session of
the Human Rights Council, Bennett said 60,000 women have lost their jobs due to
recent restrictions of the interim Afghan government.
“Recently the Taliban has restricted
women’s activities even more. Beauty salons have been prohibited, eliminating
approximately 60,000 jobs, depriving them of one of few remaining women’s only
safe spaces,” he said.
Upholding women's rights in Afghanistan
is one of the world's demands for the recognition of the Islamic Emirate.
Source: tolonews.com
https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-185096
------
Pregnant Afghan who worked with British
Council fears deportation and death at hands of Taliban
September 14, 2023
LONDON: A pregnant woman who worked as a
teacher with the British Council in her native Afghanistan before the Taliban
seized control of the nation in August 2021, and is currently in Pakistan, said
she fears arrest and deportation to her home country.
The unnamed teacher told the i newspaper
she is trapped in a cramped hotel room while she awaits a decision on her
application for a UK visa under the British government’s Afghan Relocations and
Assistance Policy, and its Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.
But the visa that allows her to remain
in Pakistan has expired months ago, she said, and she is scared even to go to a
doctor for a check-up in case she is arrested and deported to Afghanistan,
where she said she might face torture or death at the hands of the Taliban.
The woman, who worked with the British
Council between 2018 and 2020, was in hiding for 18 months in Afghanistan
before she was able to cross the border into Pakistan. She has been in the
hotel since then.
“It’s very hard for me,” she told the
newspaper. “I lived in a small room for four months. There wasn’t any window,
it was a very dark room with no facility or access to air conditioning.
“Then I moved to another room. It’s
better but there is no space for even walking. We are not allowed to go outside
of our hotel room. The menu that they’re providing is not good. I’m struggling
with anxiety, stress and depression. This pregnancy is not easy for me.”
She said it had been about three months
since she saw a doctor and added: “It’s very risky. If the police arrest me,
they will deport me back to Afghanistan.”
The teacher passed initial ARCS security
checks and was told to complete biometric tests in Pakistan. Unlike some
colleagues, however, she has yet to receive an email confirming her application
has been approved. A number of other Afghans who were living in Pakistan with
expired visas have been arrested, according to reports.
“My life is very bad,” the woman said.
“If I give birth to my baby in this hotel room, I need lots of things. I have
an urgent situation. (The UK government) should pay attention to people like
me.
“They should do something for me because
giving birth to a baby in Pakistan, in this situation, in this kind of room
with no facility, it’s very hard for me.
“I have to go to a doctor. I know it’s
very risky. It’s about four months since my visa expired. But what should I do?
What’s the solution?”
A British Council spokesperson told the
newspaper: “The ACRS scheme is run by the UK government. The British Council is
not involved in decision making in any way. The majority of our former
contractors who applied to ACRS are still in Afghanistan or third countries. We
are incredibly concerned for them and for their families’ welfare and
well-being.
“While we are relieved that a number of
our former contractors and their families have been recently informed by the UK
government that they are eligible for relocation to the UK, we are deeply
concerned by the length of time it is taking for their ACRS applications to be
progressed and for them to reach the UK. We are pushing for urgent progress
with senior contacts within the UK government.”
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2373921/world
-------
Why Is France So Obsessed With
Controlling Muslim Women's Bodies?
14 September 2023
Earlier this month, France’s top
administrative court upheld the government’s decision to ban Abayas in schools,
after a Muslim rights group had argued that the measure was discriminatory.
In doing so, the court crushed the last
remaining sliver of hope for protecting fundamental freedoms and restoring
justice for Muslim women in the country.
The French government has justified the
Abaya ban on the basis of the constitutional principle of secularism. But it is
difficult to visualise how a handful of children wearing abayas poses a threat
to France’s secularism. According to AJ+, the number of pupils who wear abayas
in school represents less than 0.00005 percent of all students in the country.
Since the beginning of the academic
year, dozens of schoolgirls have been sent home for wearing abayas. Among those
targeted were a 15-year-old wearing a Japanese kimono, and a girl wearing a
large T-shirt and pants. The French state has embarked on a disconcerting,
patriarchal journey of controlling how loose or long a dress should be - all in
the name of secularism.
In determining whether a piece of
clothing contravenes secularism, the abaya ban stipulates that teachers should
assess the pupil’s general “behaviour”. According to human rights lawyer Nabil
Boudi, this implicitly legitimises discrimination based on race and religion.
“If my name is Samira and I am wearing a
kimono or abaya, it is religious clothing; but if my name is Sophie and I wear
the same kimono, then it’s not religious clothing,” he told BFM TV.
In 1989, the same court ruled that
forbidding headscarves at school was a flagrant violation of fundamental
freedoms, noting that all pupils should be able to access education regardless
of their religious beliefs. This displeased the French government, and
parliament subsequently passed a law in 2004 forbidding all religious symbols
in schools, including headscarves. Since then, France has continued legislating
Muslim women’s bodies, regulating what they can or cannot wear.
In 2010, France passed a law banning
full-face veils, such as niqabs and burqas, in the streets. The UN Human Rights
Committee has said that this legislation constitutes a violation of human
rights.
In 2016, some beaches in southern France
banned the burkini, a modest form of swimsuit traditionally worn by Muslim
women. Many were outraged upon the publication of a photograph showing French
police forcing a Muslim woman at the beach to strip down.
Imperial tradition
The saga did not end there. This summer,
the country’s top administrative court upheld the French Football Federation’s
decision to bar women from wearing headscarves. The abaya ban thus fits into
France’s legal history of undressing Muslim women.
The court’s decision is a perfect
demonstration of how different state institutions work together to uphold
discrimination. The irony is that secularism requires a strict separation
between church and state, meaning that the state should not in principle
interfere with religious affairs.
The ban also displays how French state
institutions work together to uphold institutional racism, fitting into a long
imperial tradition of subjugating Muslim women’s bodies.
France’s obsession with such regulation
dates back to the colonial era. European travellers and colonisers have long
been obsessed with the veil. Colonialism has never been solely about economic
exploitation; it also encompasses political and ideological domination.
In 1959, anti-colonial author Frantz
Fanon wrote the following about French colonial rule in Algeria: “If we want to
destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we
must, first of all, conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil
where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of
sight.”
The unveiling of Muslim women has thus
been a central feature of colonialism, following the fallacy that colonial
powers had the duty to “civilise the inferior race”.
This “civilising mission” presupposes
that Muslim women don’t know how to be free, and that they need to be saved
from their own “backwards” culture and religion.
White feminism
During the occupation, French colonial
authorities forced Algerian women to unveil in the name of their own “freedom”,
yet raped and tortured them at the same time.
This historical colonial framework is
still reflected in today’s policies, including the implementation of an
exclusionary feminism.
More concerning is the silence from the
mainstream feminist movement in France. There is no doubt that controlling
women’s bodies and legislating how they can or cannot dress is anti-feminist.
Yet, the movement in France has been conspicuously silent when discrimination
targets Muslim women.
Key feminist activists and authors in
France have not only failed to support Muslim women but ironically even
supported their subjugation in the name of feminism.
French feminist icon Elisabeth Badinter
wrote in 2009 of Muslim women who wear the full-face veil: “Are you not aware
that you arouse mistrust and fear? …Why not go to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan
where no one will ask you to show your face?”
Another example of exclusionary and
scornful white feminism is the group Femen, which has held demonstrations
calling on Muslim women to “get naked”.
This attitude reflects a patronising
view, assuming that Muslim women do not know what is right for them, do not
know how to be free, and need to be taught. It is an exclusionary form of
feminism that is extremely harmful.
Western feminists should embrace an
intersectional view and understand that Muslim women are able to define what
feminism is for themselves. They are free political agents who can set the terms
of emancipation for themselves, rather than being forcibly liberated.
Source: middleeasteye.net
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/france-obsessed-controlling-women-bodies-why
------
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/exiled-afghan-football-crusade/d/130683