Garbanzo Toons

Sports in the Muslim World

Debbie Schlussel has an interesting post about sports in the apartheid kingdom of Bahrain.

When you allow yourself to be the house slave, that's exactly how you'll be treated.

That's the experience of Leonard Mucheru a/k/a "Mushir Salem Jawher"--a world-class Catholic marathoner from Kenya--who sold himself and his religious status to Bahrain. Now, his life has been turned upside down because he dared to go to Israel in January and win the country's Tiberias Marathon. (As readers of this site know, I've written repeatedly--including here and here--about the anti-Semitic sports and travel apartheid regularly practiced by the Islamic World.)

It's a phenomenon I've been following for years: Arab Muslim countries, whose native Muslim Arab inhabitants suck at all sports (except bomb-detonating and molotov-tossing), buy Black athletes from Africa. They make them convert to Islam, change their names, and the athletes then make Muslim countries--mostly Gulf States--into fake athletic powerhouses.

Today's Wall Street Journal--which has a front-page story on Mucheru/Jawher--reports this new form of Islamic slavery of athletes as a relatively new phenomenon, but it isn't. It's been going on for years. Still, the article is otherwise important, as it further highlights the anti-Semitic sports apartheid regularly practiced by our Islamic "allies," like the "moderate" Bahrain, which features the enlightened "Bahrain Society for Resisting Normalization With the Zionist Enemy." One wonders what the hazing is for initiation into that exclusive "club."

She's got a link to the Wall Street Journal article and a lot more to say about it. It's well worth reading.

Saudi Aramco World, a free glossy magazine reports on the Asian Games, held this past December in the apartheid country of Qatar.

The biggest gathering of athletes in history. The first major international multi-sport event to be hosted by an Arab country. The world’s largest video projection, against a backdrop of dazzling pyrotechnics. All describe the 15th Asian Games staged in Doha, Qatar last December. Like the little engine that could, tiny Qatar put on two weeks of sport with style that will be hard for even the Olympics to top.

The author goes on to describe in glowing terms, the spirit of brotherhood and friendly competition that pervaded this event, comparing it favorably to the Olympics. Of course in the eyes of the participants, this surpassed the Olympics.

Later in the article however,

The Asian Games have another similarity with the Olympics: controversy. In addition to the long-standing question of professionals competing against amateurs, the common American and European practice of hiring top-notch athletes and coaches from other countries has begun to spread to those Asian countries that can afford it. For example, Qatar’s basketball coach is American Joseph Stiebing, and most of its soccer players are trained in Europe or Latin America.

“It is legal to bring athletes from outside the country,” al Malki says to critics. “Much of the world does it. We are a small nation, and to get results we need stars.”

I would refer the reader back to Schlussel's post.

This article makes no mention of the Israeli team. I have to assume that the spirit of Asian brotherhood only extends as far as the borders of the Jewish State. At the end of the article,

Members of the International Olympic Committee, which Qatar is wooing in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, also praised the ceremony, faulting only the weather.

I have to wonder, with the unabashed antisemitism of the Muslim world, and the increasing acceptance of antisemitism to Europe, will Qatar be allowed to discriminate against Israeli and other Jewish athletes if they do host the 2016 Olympics?

Labels: anti-semitism, apartheid, Asian Games, Bahrain, Debbie Schlussel, Qatar, Suadi Aramco World

posted by Harry @ 4:05 PM