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War games Muslim women athletes offer glimmer of hope
Whether it is wishful thinking or not, we want to believe that at least on the field of play we can find some kind of shared spirit with our enemies. At this time of anniversary, 83 years after the Armistice, we are reminded of a couple of occasions on which the English and German troops played soccer in No Man's Land before they returned to their trenches to slaughter one another. At the very heart of the Cold War, we had faith that, however tenuously, sports might connect us to the Communists. We do know for a fact that Mao Zedong chose a ping-pong tournament as the symbolic way of opening Red China to America. South Africa let Arthur Ashe play tennis in Johannesburg, the very first breech of apartheid. So, if only symbolically, sports has sometimes been useful politically. There doesn't appear to be much chance for that now, though. Apart from horseracing -- the whole thoroughbred line descends from two Arabian sires -- the mideast has few athletic traditions. Moreover, fundamentalist Muslims override sports with their restrictive beliefs. Afghanistan has been the only nation in the whole world barred from the Olympics. Male athletes are not allowed to compete unless they are wearing beards and long pants. Famously, a visiting Pakistani soccer team which showed up to play in Afghanistan last year in the sport's traditional short-pants attire was punished by Taliban officials. Their heads were shaved. Of course, in that part of the world, women have the least chance to participate in athletics. Forced to cover themselves in chadors, they can compete fairly in only a few sports -- pistol target-shooting, for example. Amazingly, Iranian women did win kayaking medals at the 1998 Asian Games in Thailand. They churned through the water wearing waterproof pajama-type outfits and scarf headdresses. But the desire to compete evidently courses through all human veins, and though you probably missed it, representatives from 25 nations showed up in Tehran in October for the third Muslim Women's Games. The competition somewhat mirrored the original Greek Olympics, which could only be witnessed by males. In that case, the men ran naked. In Tehran, only women could watch, and while the female athletes were modestly attired, they were permitted to compete without veils. There is something uplifting about this news. Athletics has been, in many respects, the final barrier for women. However difficult it has been for women to get opportunity in so many endeavors, there have invariably been a few models who broke through in the past -- in the arts, in business, in medicine, in leadership. There was a Catherine the Great. There was a Joan of Arc. But women athletes? Those who would even, in their passion, seek to try were invariably dismissed -- not just for being female, but for, surely, appearing too male. Billie Jean King is, indisputably, a major cultural figure of the 20th century and one who had to fight this sterotype. Somehow, I find the Muslim Women's Games a glimmer of hope. Even by themselves, hidden from the world, trying their hardest -- be it at volleyball or tae kwon do -- these women are determined to play sports, just like everybody else. The ironic thing is, when they're swathed from head to toe, we in the west see them as women. But when they're wearing next to nothing, competing in sneakers and shorts and a halter, we only see them as athletes. Someday, the men in the middle east might understand that, too. Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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