FIFA banned an eleven-year-old’s hijab citing a soccer equipment rule

Evidence

What are we to make of an eleven-year-old girl being sent off the soccer field for wearing a hijab? The referee, himself a Muslim, ruled that the headscarf posed a risk of accidental strangulation. The premier of the province of Quebec, Jean Charest, supported the referee’s decision. The board of the International Football Association, to whom the Quebec Soccer Federation appealed, upheld the ban, announcing categorically: ‘It’s absolutely right to be sensitive to people’s thoughts and philosophies, but equally there has to be a set of laws that are adhered to, and we favour Law 4 [outlining the basic equipment required in soccer] being adhered to.’ The preoccupation with the Muslim woman’s body, and with the veil specifically, is becoming as intense as it was in colonial Algeria, an indicator, surely, of the resurgence of old colonial relationships and the structures of feeling on which they rely. It is not insignificant, too, that soccer officials turned to ‘their’ law and put their faith in Law 4 of the soccer rule book. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 404

Categorization

• CANDY: An eleven-year-old booted from soccer for a hijab, upheld by FIFA to the letter of Law 4, is a vivid elevator-conversation case of bureaucracy as racism.
• XREF: Connects to ch11/ch30 on how hijab bans against children mobilize law to mark Muslims pre-modern.