Riverbend writes about a friend who was threatened by a cleric after displaying a Brazilian flag to show his support for his World Cup favorites:
I listened to the fatwa, with him getting emotional about playing football, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Foreign occupation and being a part of a puppet government- those things are ok. Football, however, will be the end of civilization as we know it, according to Muqtada. It’s amusing- they look nothing alike- yet he reminds me so much of Bush. He can barely string two sentences together properly and yet, millions of people consider his word law. So when Bush raves about the new fledgling Iraqi government - freely elected into power, you can take a look at Muqtada and see one of the fledglings. He is currently one of the most powerful men in the country for his followers.
So this is democracy. This is one of the great minds of Bush’s democratic Iraq.
Sadra’s militia control parts of Iraq now. Just a couple of days ago, his militia, with the help of Badr, were keeping women from visiting the market in the southern city of Karbala. Women weren’t allowed in the marketplace and shop owners were complaining that their businesses were suffering. Welcome to the new Iraq.
It’s darkly funny to see what we’ve turned into, and it is also anguishing. Muqtada Al-Sadr is a measure of how much we’ve regressed these last three years. Even during the Iran-Iraq war and the sanctions, people turned to sports to keep their mind off of day-to-day living. After the occupation, we won a football match against someone or another and we’d console ourselves with ‘Well we lose wars- but we win football!’ From a country that once celebrated sports- football (soccer) especially- to a country that worries if the male football players are wearing long enough shorts or whether all sports fans will face eternal damnation! That’s what we’ve become.
I hate to say it, but I can agree with Muqtada al-Sadr to a certain extent (read the entire fatwa at Riverbend). His point is that sports diverts us from other more important goals. I part ways with his goal, the imposition of fundamentalist Shi’ism.
Sports in the US divert attention from other concerns, such as the ever increasing percentage of our national wealth going to the few.
Panen et circenses, indeed.
I am not personally a sports fan, and personally often consider sports to be a waste of time.
To urge others to follow my particular preferences about sports or other aspects of life would be grotesque. To enforce such personal predilictions, either by bullying or by law, would be a crime.