Fatwa Football

By Richard Morin
Sunday, December 18, 2005

This isn't quite social science, but it certainly is unconventional:

The Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute recently released a translation of a fatwa that it says was issued in 2003 by Saudi religious leader Sheikh Abdallah al-Najdi.

The fatwa, titled "Soccer Is Forbidden Except When Played as Training for Jihad," included the following directives:

If one of you inserts the ball between the posts and then starts to run so that his companions will run after him and hug him, like the players in America and France do, you should spit in his face, punish him, and reprimand him, for what do joy, hugging, and kissing have to do with sports?

Play in your normal clothing, or in pajamas, or something like that, but not in colorful pants and numbered jerseys. Pants and jerseys are not appropriate clothing for Muslims. They are the clothing of the nonbelievers and of the West, and therefore you must be careful not to wear them.

In the course of the game it is forbidden for groups of youth to gather and watch, since if you are gathering for the sake of sports activity and physical fitness, as you claim, why should they be looking at you? You must make them participate [in order to improve] their physical fitness and prepare for jihad; or else say to them, 'Go propagate Islam and seek out moral corruption in the marketplaces and in the press [in order to correct it], and leave us to improve our physical fitness.'

One should not use the terminology established by the nonbelievers and the polytheists, like: 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick,' 'goal,' and 'out of bounds.' Whoever pronounces these terms should be punished, reprimanded, kicked out of the game, and should even be told in public: "You have come to resemble the nonbelievers and the polytheists, and this has been forbidden."

Do not set the number [of players] according to the number of players used by the nonbelievers, the Jews, the Christians, and especially the vile America. In other words, 11 players shall not play together. Make it a larger or a smaller number.

The fatwa was published by the Saudi daily newspaper al-Watan on Aug. 25 of this year, the institute reported .

Other Muslim religious leaders quickly announced that it was fine for Muslims to play soccer by international rules. The mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Abdallah Aal-Sheikh, called on the appropriate authorities to "prosecute those involved in the publishing of these fatwas in a sharia court for the crime they have committed."

He also called on the Saudi religious police to "track down those involved and prosecute them, in view of the dangers and the venom with which they are trying to influence society."

The Price of Being a Twin

Twins may double their pleasure and double their fun, but there's also evidence that being a twin may adversely affect cognitive ability, according to London researchers.

The study team, headed by epidemiologist David A. Leon of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, examined 9,832 single births and 236 twins born in Aberdeen, Scotland, between 1950 and 1956. They examined twins in families with siblings who were not twins.

They found that the average IQ of twins was more than five points lower at age 7 and six points lower at age 9 than that of non-twins in the same family, after controlling for birth order, number of siblings, sex, mother's age and other factors known to influence cognitive ability. IQ scores for these individuals were unavailable later in life, though most experts believe that the development of IQ occurs when children are very young.

Why do twins fare a bit worse than "singleton" siblings? Leon and his research team say it could start in the womb, where "reduced prenatal growth and shorter gestations of twins may explain an important part of their lower IQ in childhood," they write in a working paper published by Bmj.com, a British online medical journal.

Red and Blue Universities

Harvard isn't crimson . . . it's true blue. Faculty, administrators and others associated with the university contributed more than $1 million to political parties or candidates in last year's election -- and 96 percent went to Democrats, according to data gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics. The center's complete list of donors with university ties shows the same tilt toward Democratic Party candidates.

School	Total	Percent To Democrats	Percent To Republicans
University of California (all campuses)	$2.1 million	92%	7%
Harvard University	1.1 million	96	4
Stanford University	622,813	92	8
Columbia University	619,572	89	11
University of Washington	461,499	96	4
School	Total	Percent To Democrats	Percent To Republicans
U. of Penn.	458,958	93	6
University of Michigan	418,881	84	15
University of Wisconsin	374,054	96	3
Others in the top 20:
Georgetown University	321,641	94	5
University of Maryland	292,632	92	7

Data: Totals based on contributions of $200 or more to federal candidates in the 2004 election, as compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ho Ho Hum

Just for fun and just in time for the holidays comes word of a study of children's moods as the kids waited to tell Santa Claus what they wanted for Christmas.

Were they excited? Scared? Delighted? A little of all three?

Actually, they seemed to be bored, reports Baruch College/City College of New York business professor John W. Trinkaus in a recent issue of Psychological Reports.

Trinkaus studied the facial expressions of 300 children lining up to see Santa Claus in a New York shopping mall. He reported that 82 percent "appeared to be indifferent to seeing Santa." Another 16 percent were hesitant while only a handful were terrified or happy.

morinr@washpost.com