Posted on 08/31/2004 6:24:15 PM PDT by Land_of_Lincoln_John
PARIS, 1 September 2004 — The Muslim world has a new hero. He is Hicham El-Gerroudj, the Moroccan running champion who bagged two gold medals at this year’s summer Olympics in Athens last week. For several days images of his heroic exploits, punctuated by smiles and tears of joy, have provided something of a relief from the Arab televisions’ normal fare.
El-Gerroudj’s triumph, however, cannot hide the fact that, for the world’s 57 majority Muslim nations, this was probably the worst Olympics ever.
To start with, the Muslim nations, who together account for some 1.2 billion people, almost a fifth of humanity, represented no more than five percent of the participants at Athens, a decline in relative numbers compared to the Sydney Summer Games four years ago.
The Muslims share of medals was even lower. Of the 57 Muslim countries only 12 won any medals. Of the 892 medals distributed in Athens, only 42 went to Muslim countries. Of the 287 gold medals, Muslim nations won only 13. This means that all the 57 Muslim nations won fewer medals than Australia which, with a population of 18 million, bagged a total of 49, including 17 gold.
None of the Muslim nations featured in the top 21 athletic nations winning medals at Athens. Turkey emerged as the leader of the Muslim group of nations by securing the 22nd place with nine medals, including three gold. Kazakhstan, which won six medals, was in the 37th place followed, in the 40th place, by Azerbaijan, which won five medals, including one gold. Iran was in 43rd place with four medals. The highest position achieved by an Arab country was that of Egypt, in 46th place, with four medals — one gold. Of the 22 members of the Arab League only four others secured places on the list: Morocco, in 51st place with three medals, including El-Gerroudj’s two golds, United Arab Emirates in 68th place with one gold, Eritrea in 73rd place with a silver, and Syria in 75th place with a bronze.
China, whose population is almost equal to that of the 57 Muslim nations combined, won 62 medals, including 31 golds.
Almost all the medals won by Muslim nations were individual sports. When it came to collective sports, Muslims were almost never seen. (The exception was Iraq’s football team, which reached the finals and secured the fourth place.)
Why do Muslim nations do so badly in international sports?
The real answer lies in the marginal place that Muslim nations play in a world system in the creation of which they did not play a part and in which they do not quite feel at home. Within the Muslim group of nations those that are least “Islamic” did the best. The secular republics of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan bagged 24 of the 42 medals won by the Muslim nations, including six of the 13 gold medals.
Six nations have labeled themselves “Islamic republic” in recent years. They are Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Only one, Iran, captured any medals — two gold, one silver and one bronze.
In many Muslim countries the more traditional elements regard sports as an indulgence that could divert human attention from religious duties. In the 1970s when Iran hosted the Asian Olympics, several mullas, including the late Ayatollah Khomeini, denounced the exercise as “a Jewish-Crusader conspiracy” to take Muslims out of mosques and into sports stadiums.
One of Khomeini’s first acts, after he seized power in 1979, was to disband all the 600 or so sports clubs and associations that operated throughout Iran. Even football, the nation’s favorite sport, was banned for three years.
Some theologians are opposed to sports because it requires physical contact. And that, in a culture, which is uncomfortable with the human body as such, is always a source of alarm. Iranian mullas, for example, have tried for decades to ban free-style wrestling, a sports that has a history of 3000 years in the country, because of fears that it might encourage homosexual tendencies between adversaries whose almost naked bodies are bound to touch in the course of a match. The sport has managed to survive the advent of Khomeinism by forcing wrestlers to compete fully clothed.
Some Muslim despots fear sports as an activity that could open spaces beyond the control of the regime. They are also uncomfortable with sports stars whose popularity could nibble at the prestige of the “supreme leader”. Often, Muslim sports champions end up either as officials of the regime or flee into exile or take to drugs and alcohol en route to early death.
With a good portion of their resources allocated to the military, most Muslim nations have little money left to spend on such “luxuries” as sport. Iran, for example, boasts only one Olympics size swimming pool, built in the 1970s by the Shah for the nation’s once famous water-polo team. In Indonesia fewer than five percent of school-age children receive regular physical education. In most cases Muslim athletes must hold one or more jobs to pay for their own training. Eight of the 13 athletes who won gold medals either trained outside the Muslim world or benefited from private donations, rather than government support, at home. Turkey, the leader of the Muslim world in sports, devotes less than one percent of its national budget to sports, compared to 18 percent for defense.
There is one other reason why the Muslim world does so badly in international sports: The virtually total absence of women. In Athens women athletes represented 39 percent of the total. In the case of the Muslim countries, however, women athletes accounted for no more than nine percent. Some Muslim countries brought no women athletes at all while others, including Iran, came with a single one, fully hijabed from head to toe.
Most estimates show that women account for more than half of the population of all Muslim nations. And yet they are almost completely shut out of the world of sports. In some countries physical education is forbidden for girls. In others, like Iran, fear that men might steal illicit glances of the female body prevents the building of sports facilities for women. By denying more than half of their population the opportunity to compete in any sport, Muslim nations reduce their overall chances of winning medals at events such as the Athens Games.
In many Muslim countries women are shut out of numerous sporting fields, notably swimming, cycling, riding, wrestling, football and, of course, gymnastics.
Having done steadily worse in the past four Olympics, there is little hope that the Muslim nations would do any better in Beijing in four years time.
Interesting article. I had noticed that too while looking at Olympic medal results.
Given Islam's love for guns, I'm surprised to see them not scoring medals in the shooting categories.
> There is one other reason why the Muslim world does
> so badly in international sports: The virtually total
> absence of women.
Plus the drag of those bomb belts on the guys :-)
But sure, without women, they can't even ENTER
half the events.
The protests in NYC are about this, right?
There is no RPG matches.
Not when you shoot from the hip, off the shoulder, or gangsta-style (rotated 90 degrees right). No wonder the Mehdi Army keeps losing.
Vertical rapid fire while screaming tends to earn low scores in Olympic competition!
LMAO!
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