Recent controversy over a statement by Arsenal's Mesut Ozil shows football and politics should not only team up for a good cause but allow for dissenting views. FMTNews Arsenal MesutOzil
Recently, Mesut Ozil of Arsenal has come under fire for voicing his support of Uighur Muslims in China who he likened to “warriors who resist persecution”. Arsenal swiftly tried to distance itself from Ozil in a bid to safeguard relations with China, a country where theclub has numerous commercial interests in.
Ozil is a practising Muslim and often recites from the Quran before football matches, as do fellow Muslim footballers such as Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah of Liverpool. He is also not shy about the difficulties of being a Muslim and a footballer during the fasting month of Ramadan. On this note, he also criticised the silence of Muslims to the plight of the Uighur Muslims, saying that “what will be remembered years later would not be the torture by the tyrants but the silence of their Muslim brothers.”
Nobody wants to think of politics when they are cheering on their favourite team. Football is supposed to be simple, not mired by political chicanery. The question is what should footballers do with the knowledge that they are individuals who garner a lot of public attention?We would do well to distinguish between an act and an intention. Regarding the former, I doubt Ozil’s intention was to rouse separatist sentiment in Xinjiang, or better yet, become a freedom fighter himself.
In other cases, mixing football with politics or religion constitutes a positive course of action. The number of football players and clubs who take a no-nonsense attitude against racism is testament to this.
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