decolonial football

These days I seem to be living in Michel Houellebecq's

, only without the comfort of knowing that everything is fiction.

The petro-Islamists have not bought the Sorbonne, as in the French author's novel, but it does seem that they have taken over FIFA, something that at the media level is infinitely more profitable than a prestigious university.

And since football is a space for entertainment, it even seems harmless for an absolute monarchy like Qatar to be interested in it.

In the book

Lorenzo Vidino collects several testimonies from former members of the organization.

One of them, Ahmed Akkari, hits the nail on the head when analyzing why this political-religious movement with reactionary overtones finds it so easy to penetrate democratic countries: "The Brothers perceive that the true Achilles heel of the West, the weakness that the ultimate precipitate of his downfall, is his materialistic nature, his willingness to trade anything, even his core values.”

Something well known by those of us who have had to endure the occasional Islamist sermon or have taken a look at the accounts of their young

.

In this part of the world, they often repeat, morality is conspicuous by its absence and that is more than enough reason to legitimize the ambitious project of ending up Islamizing the West sooner or later.

What we would not have imagined when we patiently endured the preachers with long beards, is that the Islamist penetration would be via football.

What has also been quite a surprise is that the same FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, has used decolonial rhetoric to defend the hospitable absolute monarchy that welcomes him.

Those of us who were once Muslims know this chant very well, there is no way to criticize Islamist movements without being blamed for the hypocrisy of Europe, its colonialism, ethnocentrism, supremacism and I don't know how many other isms in a simplistic childish logic of the "and you more" that ignores something important in this equation: that Islam is not the same as Islamism and that Qatar has invested huge amounts of money to spread one of the most closed and retrograde visions of the religion of Muhammad in countries where the people used to take it in a more relaxed way, in what is a true process of religious, cultural,

appropriation of both symbolic and political capital from all Muslims in the world.

If this is not colonialism, it is a lot like it.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber