U.N., FIFA VP Campaign To End FIFA’s Headscarf Ban

Last year the international football association, or FIFA, disqualified the Iranian women’s soccer team from a 2012 Olympics qualifying match because they wore Islamic headscarves. FIFA cited a safety issue for the ban, but as one Iranian soccer official said, “This ruling means that women soccer in Iran is over. Headscarves are simply what we wear in Iran.”

The United Nations yesterday joined the campaign to overturn FIFA’s ban, Reuters reported:

The U.N. Secretary-General’s special adviser on sport for development and peace Wilfried Lemke has written to FIFA president Sepp Blatter expressing support for the right to wear a safe, Velcro-opening headscarf. [...]

[A U.N. statement said] “It would send the message that each female player, from the top elite level down to the grassroots, has the freedom to decide whether or not to wear this particular piece of attire while on the field.

“It would give the opportunity for remarkable female athletes to demonstrate that wearing the headscarf is not an obstacle to excelling in life and sports, and would hence contribute to challenging gender stereotypes and bringing about a change in mentalities.”

Now FIFA vice president Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein of Jordan will make the case to the organization this weekend that it should overturn the ban. “The present situation is saying to women worldwide that you’re not allowed to participate for a reason that makes no sense. That’s prejudice. It’s not fair,” he says, according to the AP:

He insists that permitting hijabs is “not an issue of religious symbolism — it is simply a case of cultural modesty.”

If the motion is rejected, the prince says “there will be lot of soul searching about what the priorities are in this sport.”

Prince Ali was elected FIFA vice president more than a year ago and is, amid allegations of corruption and scandal, the Telegraph reports, “bringing energy to the effort to coax the organisation into the light.”