Sports and the Middle East .. From the thresholds of modernity to the arena of protest

Imran Abdullah

It was not long before the emergence of sports clubs in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, until the Arab countries - most of which lived during the colonial era - the early experiences of the establishment of sports clubs.

The beginnings of the Constantine sports club in Algeria date back to the end of the 19th century before it was established with legal cover in the second decade of the twentieth century and adopted national positions against colonialism.

In Egypt, sports clubs were established in Cairo and Alexandria in the first decade of the twentieth century, such as the Railway Club 1903, while Yemen knew its first club "Union Mohammadi" in 1905, which turned its name to "sports hills" in 1975.

In his August study of popular sports culture in the Middle East, Murad Yildiz, a scholar of Middle Eastern cultural and social history at the University of Michigan, sees football as a civic activity and a common civic sphere, and more essential to modernity in the region.

Sport is a civil activity
Yildiz sought to follow the popular sports culture in the late Ottoman era, exploring its transformation through ethnic, religious and linguistic divisions. Of national and civil lines of belonging.

Beginning in the late 19th century, teachers, staff, and ordinary people increasingly viewed sports teams as the "panacea for society," and by analyzing their role in Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul and Tehran in the interwar period, Yildiz considers football teams to be a form of institutional continuity. Compensated for the absence of imperial institutions and the institutional vacuum of the state.

Yildiz is an example of the Turkish sports club "Wafa", which was founded in 1908, the Greek club in Alexandria and Port Said, which was founded in the same period of the early twentieth century, and the Association of Muslim Youth in Cairo and other clubs and associations of sporting character.

He adds that the documents and the effects of these ancient clubs disappeared in different parts of the Middle East as a result of neglect and the formation of modern states and unrest, however, the origins of sports gatherings and clubs dating back to the era of colonialism, played a role in the formation of nationalities and popular culture.

The beginning of voluntary links
Later sports clubs became part of a broader phenomenon of voluntary associations, and sports, literary, religious, scientific and political associations grew up with the growing conviction that men of the expanding middle class needed to fill their "free time" with useful and ethical activities, and sport touched the lives of many elites and non-elites alike. .

In 1894, Al-Hilal magazine, founded by writer and historian Gerji Zidan as the first monthly cultural magazine in Arabic, published a report on the formation of sports clubs, and also referred to the establishment of a "new club" by a group of notables of Cairo as an attempt to carry out useful activities and invest time away from "places" Fun. "

In fact, sports enthusiasts formulated convincing arguments to emphasize the importance of sports clubs in prestigious magazines such as Al Hilal, while clubs were making their first strides in the Middle East, but clubs continued to gain popularity at the beginning of the 20th century before their popularity increased strongly in the 1920s and 1930s. Twentieth century when fans poured into the stadiums to watch the games as they are today.

Newly sports
According to the director of the sports science program at Qatar University, Mahfouz Amara, sport began as a complementary space in colonial societies, but it soon became a field of resistance, and thus an area where competition between national and Arab nationalist ideas could flourish.

But the author of "Sport, Politics and Society in the Arab World" notes that the excessive manipulation of sport by the Arab state to gain political legitimacy and national prestige has transformed the sports arena into spaces for young people to express their frustration and resentment of the policies of the Arab countries and the failures of the development project.

Amara goes back to the example of Algeria, which saw early beginnings of sports clubs. Whereas sport was linked to socialism and nation-building between 1962 and 1980, by the economic crisis of 1980, it became an area of ​​expression of discontent and discontent. .

The author notes that football messages are no longer within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state, opening the way for criticism of regimes and governments as well as new forms of cultural expression.