A new fatwa aims to “discipline women and save them from turning immoral,” by banning them from watching the bare legs of men playing football.
The inferior status for women is enshrined in Sharia. Women are mandated to cover up, lest they be abused. Despite the constant assertion that the hijab, niqab and burqa are not religiously mandated:
(Quran 24:31) And tell the believing women to reduce of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed.
If a woman does not cover, she may be assaulted, and it is her faul:
(Quran 33:59) O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to bring down over themselves of their outer garments. That is more suitable that they will be known and not be abused.
So women must take responsibility for a man’s thoughts. It is her fault if she wears clothing that may tempt him to sin, and it is still her fault if her own mind wanders at the sight of a man with “bare knees” and “exposed thighs”:
Another fatwa has been issued from Uttar Pradesh’s Deoband, trying “to discipline women and save them from turning immoral.”
The latest bans them from watching football, fearing they might get attracted to the bare knees and exposed thighs of the players.
Saudi Arabia issued a similar ban in 2015.
“Muslim women shouldn’t watch football, says new fatwa”, Newsbytes India (thanks to The Religion of Peace), January 29, 2018:
Another fatwa has been issued from Uttar Pradesh’s Deoband, trying “to discipline women and save them from turning immoral.”
The latest bans them from watching football, fearing they might get attracted to the bare knees and exposed thighs of the players.
Mufti Athar Kasmi of Deoband says it’s haraam for women to look at men at all, reported India Today.
Kasmi’s fatwa borrows from a similar ban issued in 2015 by Sheikh Saad Al Hajari, a Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia.
“They (women) will be looking at footballers’ thighs and all their attention will be on that. They wouldn’t even care about the competition or scores,” Hajari had said.
He even slammed men for “allowing” their wives to watch football.
Hajari is known for issuing deeply misogynistic fatwas. He has previously banned women from driving “because they have a quarter of a brain”.
Closer home, Deoband’s Islamic school Darul Uloom in October 2017 banned Muslim women from plucking, trimming, shaping eyebrows, cutting hair or visiting beauty parlors…..