In Saudi Arabia, they take the haircuts of their professional athletes very seriously. Due to a recent crackdown on “un-Islamic” hairstyles amongst athletes, one Saudi goalkeeper, Waleed Abdullah, was forced by officials to have his hair cut before being allowed onto the pitch for a match.
Abdullah, who plays for the club Al Shabab, as well as the Saudi Arabian national team, had a small mohawk on the front of his head, and officials pulled out their scissors and forced Abdullah to cut it off in front of a full stadium of people.
The Independent, has some more info about the movement to eliminate “eccentric” hairstyles among soccer players.
It follows an announcement by Saudi Arabia’s youth federation asking football clubs and the Olympic committee to “ban the qazaa phenomenon”, using the Arabic term for eccentric hairstyles worn by athletes, according to Arabic sports website Arriyadiyah.
One commentator, writing in the Saudi newspaper Al-Jazirah on Friday, urged the football federation to “impose sanctions” on players whose “bizarre haircuts are imitated by their fans in schools”.
In the video, you can barely even see Abdullah’s mohawk, as it looked to me at first like a “regular” haircut, but apparently the small tuft at the front was enough for it to be considered too much for Saudi officials to let him play.
Restricting the styles of athletes and making them get public haircuts may seem like a rather comical thing, but Saudi Arabia routinely ranks as one of the worst countries for civil rights in the world. In fact, they only started allowing women the right to vote in December of last year, so when you put it into a larger perspective, it doesn’t seem quite as funny.
(Via The Independent)
