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Muslim sprinter takes the gold

submitted by firefly

1 decade 7 years 1 month 4 weeks ago

Ruqaya Al Ghasara, a sprinter from Bahrain, is shown here winning the 200m final of the 2006 Asian Games (not sure of the translation!). She has garnered quite the following from both the Muslim, and non-Muslim community, for not only her abilities, but from her running attire, strictly adhering to the traditional dress of completely covering bare arms and legs, and wearing of her hajib (the headscarf).
Yet Al Ghasara, who claims U.S. sprinter Marion Jones as a role model, said she hoped her clothing choice would inspire other Muslim women to join in competitive sports.
There have been questions about whether it is proper for Nike, to put their corporate logo on a religious garment, and they have been heavily criticized for doing so. But investigation reveals it was not the case, Ruqaya does it herself. More details are here:
http://www.murketing.com/journal/?p=300 and here:
http://www.canada.com/topics/sports/story.html?id=a39bedd6-e0da-47c7-9ef4-7e24a24d0bcc&k=72455 about her.

7 Comments

Great post!

I hope she does encourage more orthodox/conservative Muslim women to participate in competitive sports. For example, Iran has many fine female athletes but they are prevented from competing in a lot of international sporting events. Hopefully this will show the hardliners that you can be a successful athlete on the international stage without abandoning your religious beliefs and principles.

It's also nice to see true Gulf athletes - not citizens from other countries who have been nationalized in order to win medals!

Thanks gwaan! (hope she makes it out!)
I've first heard about her in an ESPN article. My first thought was if the hajib had any drag, or "wind resistance", where every tenth (or hundredth!) of a second is crucial.
But she seems to do well!

Apparently, she says that it makes her faster!

*sports

Adding video to channels (Sports) - requested by nibiyabi.

*length=2:30

The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 2:30 - length declared by ReverendTed.

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