Why are Muslim bad at sport

[musika man]

We all Muslims love watching different sports and why are we bad at the highest level? Excluding one or two soccer players, why r muslims bad at sports? I read an article from the Arabnews.com by Amir Taheri, and
it seems to show that there are a lot of pressures on the Muslim world and it is effecting every aspect of life.

To start with, the Muslim nations, who together account for some 1.2 billion people, almost a fifth of humanity, represented no more than five percent of the participants at the last Athens Olympic games, a decline in relative numbers compared to the Sydney Summer Olympic Games four years ago.

The Muslims share of medals was even lower. Of the 57 Muslim countries only 12 won any medals. Of the 892 medals distributed in Athens, only 42 went to Muslim countries. .....

Almost all the medals won by Muslim nations were individual sports. When it came to collective sports, Muslims were almost never seen. (The exception was IraqÂ’s football team, which reached the finals and secured the fourth place.)

why do Muslim nations do so badly in international sports?

The real answer lies in the marginal place that Muslim nations play in a world system in the creation of which they did not play a part and in which they do not quite feel at home. Within the Muslim group of nations those that are least “Islamic” did the best. The secular republics of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan bagged 24 of the 42 medals won by the Muslim nations, including six of the 13 gold medals........

In many Muslim countries the more traditional elements regard sports as an indulgence that could divert human attention from religious duties. In the 1970s when Iran hosted the Asian Olympics, several mullas, including the late Ayatollah Khomeini, denounced the exercise as “a Jewish-Crusader conspiracy” to take Muslims out of mosques and into sports stadiums. ..

Some theologians are opposed to sports because it requires physical contact. And that, in a culture, which is uncomfortable with the human body as such, is always a source of alarm. Iranian mullas, for example, have tried for decades to ban free-style wrestling, a sports that has a history of 3000 years in the country, because of fears that it might encourage homosexual tendencies between adversaries whose almost naked bodies are bound to touch in the course of a match......
They are also uncomfortable with sports stars whose popularity could nibble at the prestige of the “supreme leader”. .....With a good portion of their resources allocated to the military, most Muslim nations have little money left to spend on such “luxuries” as sport. Iran, for example, boasts only one Olympics size swimming pool, built in the 1970s by the Shah for the nation’s once famous water-polo team. In Indonesia fewer than five percent of school-age children receive regular physical education. ..... Eight of the 13 athletes who won gold medals either trained outside the Muslim world or benefited from private donations, rather than government support, at home. ....There is one other reason why the Muslim world does so badly in international sports: The virtually total absence of women. In Athens women athletes represented 39 percent of the total. In the case of the Muslim countries, however, women athletes accounted for no more than nine percent. Some Muslim countries brought no women athletes at all while others, including Iran, came with a single one, fully hijabed from head to toe.

Most estimates show that women account for more than half of he population of all Muslim nations. And yet they are almost completely shut out of the world of sports. In some countries physical education is forbidden for girls. In others, like Iran, fear that men might steal illicit glances of the female body prevents the building of sports facilities for women. By denying more than half of their population the opportunity to compete in any sport, Muslim nations reduce their overall chances of winning medals at events such as the Athens Games.

In many Muslim countries women are shut out of numerous sporting fields, notably swimming, cycling, riding, wrestling, football and, of course, gymnastics.

[Libah86]

simple all the good ppl have been taken by eurppeans countries

alot of muslims in football

Ribery, zidane, toure