Praying Forbidden (Only for Christians)- - - - - - - - -
FIFA, the worldwide soccer administration, has sent an “official admonishment” to the Brazilian Federation whose soccer players, at their victorious final in the recent Confederations Cup in South Africa, thanked God with a collective prayer in the middle of the field. An explicitly Christian prayer, to be sure, seeing that it is the common faith in Brazil. The FIFA censorship is that religion must be separated from soccer.
This does not seem to us to be an insignificant event. However, little mention of it has been made in the media. We may be wrong, but we only saw it mentioned yesterday in the Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. The article in the Corriere was unexceptional. The one in La Repubblica, however, made us jump up from the chair. The author, in fact, soon after describing the rite enacted by the Brazilian players, and after having pointed out that many wore “T-shirts a’ la Kakà, i.e. (“I belong to Jesus”), commented: “if this had been Muslim prayers, the sky would have opened. Instead the matter has hardly been mentioned”.
It is indeed extraordinary, the distortion of the facts and the truth. Here it must be said that exactly the opposite is true to that reported by La Repubblica.
The sky has opened against the Christian prayer of the Brazilians; while nobody, especially FIFA, has said a word about a similar manifestation, which was also transmitted worldwide, a few days earlier. This was the prayers of the Muslim players after their win against Italy in the middle of the field facing Mecca as per their tradition.
La Repubblica wants us to believe — in spite of the admonishment of FIFA — that the Christian prayer of the Brazilians goes unnoticed, while a hypothetical Muslim prayer (…) [hanging final sentence in the original]
Acceptable prayer
Hat tip: ESW.
2 comments:
Are the football (soccer) players so confused that they don't even know in which direction mecca lays?
The sky has opened against the Christian prayer of the Brazilians; while nobody, especially FIFA, has said a word about a similar manifestation, which was also transmitted worldwide, a few days earlier. This was the prayers of the Muslim players after their win against Italy in the middle of the field facing Mecca as per their tradition.
As an agnostic, this is a tough issue. I would rather have all religious expression deleted from sports events. Then again, I do not watch most sports events so my wishes are totally irrelevant.
Unequal application of regulations to Christian and Muslim teams is another matter entirely.
Despite my own personal preferences, the best possible outcome would be one in which Islamic religious gestures were generally categorized as political statements in favor of theocratic fascism and all other religious expressions were allowed.
Islam must be made to endure the most restrictive prohibitions upon any outward manifestation of its ugly and offensive doctrine.
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