All Muscle, No Backbone

Due to the all-encompassing nature of sharia law, there are very few areas of private or public life that Islam does not legislate over in some way. Similarly, there are increasingly fewer areas of life where Islam is not taking hold, and where it is not convincing weak-willed non-believers to bend over before it.

Consider the case of Kulsoon Abdullah, a Muslim woman from Atlanta, USA, who - along with the US Olympic Committee - petitioned the International Weightlifting Federation to change its rules to allow her to wear Islamic dress during participation in competitions. Previously, the rules had mandated that competitors must have bare arms and legs so that judges can tell when the elbows and knees have "locked" and a lift has been properly completed.

Having won her appeal, Abdullah has been successful in having the rules changed so that she can now wear "a hijab and a body-covering unitard".

This case raises some interesting issues.

Islamic law mandates that when out in public, women must cover everything except their face and hands, in accordance with the words of Muhammad:

“Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, entered upon the Apostle of Allah wearing thin clothes. The Apostle of Allah turned his attention from her. He said: O Asma, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands.” (Abu Dawud b.32, no.4092)

However, additionally, the body coverings that Muslim women wear must not be tight-fitting or reveal their figures. For example: "Women are forbidden to wear thin clothes which reveal their shapes when they go out." (Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, A Treatise on Maliki Fiqh, p.386) A fatwa issued on the website of the popular South African Muslim preacher Ebrahim Desai emphasises this point repeatedly. Kulsoon Abdullah's form-fitting "unitard" clearly violates this explicit law.

Furthermore, Abdullah shouldn't even be at the event, since Islamic law forbids women from leaving the home without the permission of their husbands and for any reason other than attendance of serious events such as funerals (Qayrawani, p.387; Reliance of the Traveller, p.538), and they certainly couldn't be in the presence of men to whom they are not related.

In other words, Kulsoon Abdullah is barely following Islamic law at all. There is therefore a very good possibility that her demands to wear a loosely defined "Islamic dress" while weightlifting have next to nothing to do with piety, and everything to do with getting one over the Infidels. After all, if she can win a small battle like this now, what larger battle can she win next time? If she can convince the Infidels to change the rules of the game to accomodate her religio-political ideology, what other concessions might they make, if threatened strongly enough with the stigma of "Islamophobia" and religious discrimination if they fail to comply?

Well...perhaps they'll allow sharia law to supercede their own law in Britain, or America, or France, or anywhere else in the Western world?

But that couldn't be what's going on, could it? It's just a woman who wants to do some weightlifting. Go back to sleep.