Is Islamophobic a Word?

by Kyle Smith, Doberman On The Diamond

Soccer fans overseas aren't the most sane politically correct bunch of individuals in the world. They want their team to win, and will do whatever they can to mess with the opposition. And so it went again last week, as fans of the Engish soccer club Newcastle had a few choice words for a player from rival team Middlesbrough. The player, who goes by the moniker Mido, is from Egypt, and is a Muslim. As the fans noted with this chant:

"Mido, he’s got a bomb you know. Mido's got a bomb."

Not the most clever of rhetoric, but insulting enough. Ah, but the Newcastle fans weren't done with the insults. Engish newspaper The Guardian explains:

"Although the FA, which rarely encounters Islamophobia, is primarily interested in stamping out all forms of racism, its investigation will also touch on further chants directed at Mido, most notably 'Mido is a Paedo', which was apparently the chosen way of some Newcastle fans of reminding their Boro counterparts of the Cleveland child abuse scandal in the 80s."

If you don't know what that chant means, it's pretty simple. That he's a child molestor. The Cleveland child abuse scandal is a reference to that.

And for all of this abuse heaped on Mido, what happens after he scores a goal in the game and puts his finger to lips to make a "shush" gesture? Yellow card. No taunting the fans, Mido. He was none too pleased about this:

"The thing that I really don't understand is why I got booked. I was told it was for security reasons, but I don't see how that is possible. I don't see what I did which would affect the security of the fans. I just put my finger to my mouth to tell them to be quiet."

So, with all of this going on, and Newcastle fans being touted as drunken racists, they must be pretty sorry this happened, right? Um, not exactly. More from The Guardian:

"Ian Cusack, of the Newcastle fanzine True Faith, who was at the game, said: 'The Mido chants were very unsavoury but I don't think they were racist, Newcastle have Muslim players, Emre is a Muslim. They were just a way of winding the opposition up.'"

And on a Newcastle fan website, a bloke named Ross Molyneux wrote a post entitled, "Squawk like an Egyptian". In it, he defended the fans actions, writing:

"Now to something that seems to have got the media`s knickers in a twist. There`s nowt like a bit of blood curdling baiting of an opposition player in a match and it`s fair to say Mido got his slice of the abuse. Our fans sang a few ditties about 'Mido is a Paedo' and 'Mido, he`s got a bomb you know'. Straightaway the media response was to dub us sick for abusing him for being a child molester cum Muslim terrorist ... (Boro fans) brand us rapists. Do we care?"

European soccer. Isn't it fun?