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1. Soccer: Moulding the Middle East and North Africa

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
Nowhere in the world has sports in general and soccer in particular played such a key role in the development of a region than in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, the nexus of sports, politics and society is one area that Middle East studies with few exceptions have ignored. Similarly, sports studies have focused on all parts of the world with one exception: the Middle East and North Africa. Nonetheless, sports and particularly soccer has been in various parts of the Middle East key to nation formation, nation building, regime formation, regime survival and the struggles for human, gender and labour rights. This working paper is an attempt to fill a gap in the literature and contribute to the development of theory on the role of sports in the Middle East and North Africa.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Nationalism, Labor Issues, Sports, and State Building
Political Geography:
Africa, Middle East, and North Africa

2. Soccer vs. Jihad: A Draw

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
There is much that militant Islamists and jihadists agree on, but when it comes to sports in general and soccer in particular sharp divisions emerge. Men like the late Osama bin Laden, Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah stand on one side of the ideological and theological divide opposite groups like the Taliban, Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, Boko Haram, and the jihadists who took control of northern Mali in 2012. The Islamic State, the jihadist group that controls swaths of Syria and Iraq, belongs ideologically and theologically to the camp that views soccer as an infidel invention designed to distract the faithful from their religious obligations but opportunistically employs football in its sophisticated public relations and public diplomacy endeavour. Bin Laden, Haniyeh and Nasrallah employ soccer as a recruitment and bonding tool based on the belief of Salafi and mainstream Islamic scholars who argue that Prophet Muhammad advocated physical exercise to maintain a healthy body. However, the more militant students of Islam seek to re- write the rules of the game to Islamicise it, if not outright ban the sport. The practicality and usefulness of soccer is evident in the fact that perpetrators of attacks, like those by Hamas on civilian targets in Israel in 2003 and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, bonded by playing soccer together.
Topic:
Terrorism, Violent Extremism, Sports, Islamic State, and Militant Islam
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Syria