May all these three cruel and rude nations leave Christian Russia soon!
Here is why:
Many Egyptian Christians Feel Left Out of World Cup
Egypt’s first World Cup in 28 years has captivated the soccer-crazy nation, with intense focus on the squad and the broader game.
The Egyptians played the first match of the tournament June 15 and held two-time World Cup winner Uruguay scoreless for 89 minutes, until conceding a late goal and losing 1-0.
Still, the performance – with star striker Mohamed Salah injured on the sidelines – attracted international praise and gripped the millions of people gathering in groups across Egypt to watch their team together.
It was a welcome distraction for Egyptians who are struggling under harsh economic conditions. The 3-1 loss in the next match to host Russia, even with Salah back in the lineup, ended Egypt’s chances of advancing beyond the group stage. Despite the loss, the love and respect enjoyed by the team and the players remained intact.
Yet it wasn’t an entirely unifying experience.
For the country’s Christians, about 10 percent of the population, the composition of the team and the way the squad was perceived highlighted what they believe is a problem with the sport in Egypt.
No Christian has been on the national soccer squad for more than a decade, and just one played for any of the 18 top-flight clubs last season.
Egyptian coaches and officials dismiss any suggestion of discrimination, but Christians disagree. Egypt’s Christian spiritual leader has broken the church’s silence on the issue by publicly complaining about their disproportionate representation in the sport.
Egypt’s all-Muslim World Cup squad is known for being pious. The team even chose make its World Cup base in Muslim Chechnya.
The national squad has been nicknamed the prostrators because the players offer a Muslim prayer when they score. They regularly pray together when in camp and read the opening verse of the Quran before kickoff. Some perform the Muslim ritual wash before games. Generally, they frame competition, wins and defeats in religious terms.
Hassan Shehatah, one of Egypt’s most successful coaches, said nearly a decade ago that, to him, a player’s religious piety was as important as his skills. Hassan led an all-Muslim squad to win three of Egypt’s seven African titles between 2006 and 2010.
When goalkeeper Ahmed Elshenawy was named man of the match against Uruguay, he refused the Budweiser-sponsored award on religious grounds.
The perceived exclusion of Christians from top flight soccer and the national team is at odds with the outreach to the ancient community by Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt’s general-turned-president who led the military’s 2013 ouster of an Islamist president. El-Sissi has emphatically and repeatedly spoken about inclusion and sectarian harmony. However, his government, critics and some Christians say, has failed to shield the community from the day-to-day discrimination, particularly in rural areas with less state authority and religious tolerance.
Pope Tawadros II, head of the Orthodox Coptic Christians and a close el-Sissi ally, rarely speaks publicly of discrimination, but has recently waded into the issue with uncustomary bluntness. “It’s extraordinary that all of Egypt’s football teams don’t have a single Copt who has good legs and who kicked a ball on the streets when he was little,” he said.
Ahmed Hossam, a retired striker – and a Muslim who played for some of Europe’s biggest clubs – was more blunt.
He claimed in a recent television interview that youth team coaches were driving Christians away.
“Regrettably, there’s a lot of people in Egypt who are bigoted over color, religion and ethnicity,” Hossam, better known as Mido, said. “We must confront them and not bury our heads in the sand. Can you believe it that in the history of football in Egypt, only five Christians played at the top level?”
As the only Christian on his soccer youth team, Ramon Zhery says he tried everything he could to blend in with his teammates. At the end, it was not enough. Zhery, now 28, plays for a third division club in southern Egypt. He says discrimination against his faith kept him from rising further.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Zhery recounted how he tried to establish harmony with his teammates and reassure them that, though a Christian, he was just another player like them.
When they huddled before kickoff to recite the Quran’s opening verse – a ritual meant to serve as a plea for divine help – he whispered a Christian prayer to himself. When at camp, he woke up before everyone and went about rousing them to perform the dawn prayers, one of five that Muslims offer daily.
“Mohammed Salah is a world star and he prostrates every time he scores and everyone knows he is a Muslim,” said Zhery.
The Christians’ response to their perceived exclusion from domestic soccer has been “church football” – a nationwide league of five-a-side teams that is played mostly on church grounds or rented pitches.
Andrew Raafat, a physical education teacher who tried his luck in club soccer before he settled for a coaching job at a Cairo Church, says some of the better young players he works with want to play at the top level.
“I cannot tell them that they will never be selected,” Raafat said. “They get selected sometimes, but they are later let go.”
Selected Comments:
Christians better wake up. The rest of the world is not interested in living in harmony with you or treating you fairly.
Crux: when selection is not based mostly on merit, Egypt is sending a soccer team that is not as good as it coulf be. Prayers aren’t gonna solve their insufficiency. They reap what they sowed…
Well, the Egyptian soccer player PRAYERS must not have been effective…. They still lost miserably. Now we know why – they are not right with god, but seek god’s favor….
Render unto soccer that which is soccers.
Christians in the ME should be given their own country….sort of like Israel.
That was called Lebanon….but Muslims got a foothold….and you know the rest.
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST COPTS IN EGYPTIAN SPORT CLUBS
This report has been sent to the FIFA officials directly, and submitted online via the new FIFA complaint mechanism.
Copts have been struggling with widespread, comprehensive and systematic religious, governmental and societal discrimination, which extends to all aspects of life in Egypt, including sports and soccer. During the past half-century, an infinitely small number of Coptic footballers – no more than 6 – have managed to join top flight soccer clubs. Some of those have spoken out about the rampant religious intolerance and the difficulties they have encountered. For instance, former Coptic footballer Ashraf Youssef told a newspaper that his teammates refused to eat with him simply because he is Christian (1). There are currently 540 players in the top-flight soccer clubs in Egypt, and that number includes only one Coptic footballer. The Egyptian Olympic Mission to Brazil in 2016 was completely devoid of Copts, and the same applies to the Egyptian National Team at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Not a single Copt can be found in either the main team or the reserve, and it follows that there are no Coptic sports commentators anywhere in official Egyptian media outlets or in private Muslim-owned media.
Coptic Solidarity has filed a formal complaint with FIFA in 2016 to investigate the widespread sports and soccer discrimination against Christians in Egypt. This Complaint prompted many Christians to speak up about the significant religious discrimination in soccer, which amounts to sports racism. A number of moderate brave Muslims have also addressed the same issue.
“In Egypt, we have a large number of racists who do not try to hide [their racism],” said renowned international player Ahmed Hossam – known as Mido – in a TV interview. He frankly wondered, “Does it make sense that throughout the entire history of soccer in Egypt, there have only been five Christian footballers at the top level? There are many Christian children who are not allowed to continue to play because of the racist attitude of certain coaches. I have proposed that Christians should make up at least 10% of all junior teams in order to resolve this problem”(2).
In another TV interview, footballer and sports commentator Khalid Al Ghandour mentioned a racist incident against a Coptic person at Minya Sports Club. The caller, Shenouda Wahba, reported that one of his relatives had signed up for soccer tryouts at Minya Sports Club. The club’s technical director rejected him and stipulated that he should convert to Islam in order to be selected. Mr. Al Ghandour concluded by saying, “No one knows more than I do that there are Christian soccer talents treated unfairly in Egypt, it is absurd that there are 18 major soccer teams, and not a single Coptic player in any of them” (3).
Strangely, instead of investigating this racist incident, the Sports Media Committee rebuked Khalid Al Ghandour, claiming that his statements provoke sedition and fanaticism!!!!(4).
An altercation, seen on TV, between Al Ahli club technical director, Mr. Ikrami, and a young Copt named Pierre Zouhair Shafiq, took place when the young Christian man expressed his desire to join Al Ahli. When Ikrami found out that Shafiq and his colleague were Christians, he pointed to the main door of the club and told them to get out (5). Shafiq’s colleague recalled the incident in another TV interview and confirmed that Ikrami threw them out after realizing they were Christians (6).
In an interview with Al Youm Al Sabee newspaper on March 22, 2018, Pope Tawadros II, who usually steers clear of the issue of Coptic rights, said in answer to a question about the lack of Coptic soccer players, “Do not ask Copts about this, rather address the question to clubs and playgrounds, how likely it is that there is not a single Coptic footballer to be found in all Egyptian soccer teams?!!”(7).
At the well-known club Al Ahli, a Christian child named Tony Atef was rejected because he had a cross tattooed on his wrist. The media picked up on the incident, which forced the club to reconsider and accept him to avoid a possible scandal (8).
Dr. Yasser Ayoub, the most renowned sports reporter in Egypt, wrote several articles explicitly stating that there is widespread sports discrimination against Copts. In one of them, he observed, “It is neither logical nor natural that we do not have a single Coptic soccer player in all of the Official Egyptian league teams … One of the real reasons for this situation is the implicit oppression of Copts, which is not acknowledged due to ignorance and intolerance, or out of fear of offending sensibilities and causing tension” (9, 10, 11).
Mr. Ayoub reiterated in another interview, “Anyone who tries to prove that Christians are discriminated against in soccer is considered an agitator who is sowing sedition, so the issue is only raised in secret, while everyone denies it publicly” (12).
Egyptian intellectual Dr. Khalid Montaser put it in a nutshell in an article in Al-Watan Egyptian newspaper, “There is a chronic red line set against admitting Christians to soccer teams in Egypt … We are a racist state par excellence, and a nation adept at discriminating between its children by means of religion, and this is the reason we did not even have 10 Christian footballers over the past 100 years … If a Christian excels and tries to join a team, the coach may sing his praises, but then turns him down because ‘he is unfortunately a Christian’”(13).
Author Sami al-Behairy told one such story: his Christian friend Maged Nabih Mikhail had passed the tryouts in Al Ahli club, performing well in front of the foreign coach. However, an official at the club asked about his name to issue a player I.D., and once he realized he is Christian, he simply told him: “Sorry, we cannot admit you into the team” (14).
Famous Art critic Tariq al-Shennawi raised a question in his column at Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper about the reasons for Coptic absence in soccer, stating, “The undeniable fact is that there is a distinct Coptic absence in soccer. Are Muslim families no longer willing to let their children play soccer with the children of their Coptic neighbors?”(15).
Writer Osama Ghareib responded to this question in the same newspaper, “Copts are being excluded from soccer because they are being increasingly accused and labeled as infidels,” he explained, adding that “Exclusion from soccer is not the only repercussion, as the infidel label may make them targets for murder and rape…. Since the majority of sports officials in major clubs are newly religious, you will not find one among them who would welcome a Christian child even if his talent exceeded that of famous international footballer Messi “(16).
Mada Masr online Newspaper published an Arabic/English report on the marked exclusion of Copts from professional soccer in Egypt, highlighting a number of cases that were excluded for religious reasons (17, 18).
Writer Tawfiq Humaid called on international player Mohammed Salah to lend his support to the efforts to end religious bias in sports against Christian Egyptians. He reminded him that were he a Christian, he would not have had the opportunity to play professional soccer in Egypt; and on the other hand, if the Western World did not consider competence to be the sole criterion, Salah would not have achieved international status (19).
Islamization of Sports
The problem of Coptic absence from soccer teams reflects a wider phenomenon, namely the Islamization of Egyptian society, including sports. In Egypt, the national soccer team is known as “the kneeling team” i.e., those who kneel down to worship in the Islamic way. Former technical director of the Egyptian national team, Hassan Shehata, used to have a Muslim cleric accompany the team on international trips to recite the Quran. He once said in an interview that “a player’s relationship with God and his proper behavior are important factors when he selects players who represent Egypt internationally”(20).
In an article published in Al-Ahram newspaper, researcher Wahid Abdel-Majid criticized Shehata because of the way he mixed religion and sports (21).
This general push for Islamization is reflected in the pressure put on foreign non-Muslim coaches and players to convert to Islam. Some of them have already converted to Islam so as not to lose their jobs, while others refused to, including Ivorian footballer Coulibaly who left the Egyptian team, later stating that they wanted him to convert to Islam (22).
Islamization of sports was also manifested in such statements made by Al-Azhar Institution, “Every goal scored by Mohammad Salah promotes Islam in Europe, makes English people sing the praises of Islam, and changes the way Europeans view the [Islamic] beard” (23, 24).
Coptic Reaction to Discrimination in Sports
As frustrated Copts struggle to find a way around the prevalent discrimination in sports, their options remain limited. In fact, filing complaints is about the only thing they can do, given that all sports clubs are under the supervision of the Egyptian State, and consequently their exclusion from soccer is a State policy.
A book entitled “A Goal in the Playground of Fanaticism”, published in 2010, explored in detail the exclusion of Copts from Egyptian playgrounds. Nour Qaldis, the book’s author and a Christian journalist at Coptic newspaper Watani, highlighted a large number of cases where talents were rejected on religious grounds. The book reached the conclusion that discrimination against Copts in sports is a far-reaching phenomenon, and that preventing young Copts from joining youth teams is a strategy designed to ensure that no Copts will be able to qualify for official soccer teams (25).
The only option left to Coptic churches was to organize church tournaments in small playfields within these churches, which at least gave Copts the chance to practice. However, this option is still flawed, since these are small Playgrounds, lacking professional capabilities and the ability to nominate Coptic players for official clubs (26).
Last year, a young Christian man founded the “Je Suis” Academy as a way to bring together talented Copts who were rejected by major clubs. He rented soccer fields in remote areas, thus allowing them to develop their skills. However, limited resources remain a problem, as well as the unchanging attitude of professional clubs which continue to reject those talented players
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