On Soccer and Jihad

I've never been a great fan of soccer--at least not since I was cut from the team in the eighth grade--but the fatwa against the sport recently delivered by an excitable Saudi cleric seems a bit over the top to me. No boundary lines, no shorts or numbered jerseys, no crossbars on the goal posts, no spectators--all these are to be shunned as the corrupt practices of Jews, Christians, and polytheists. Still, I found the recommendation against excessive celebration after scoring to be of some merit: "You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish and reprimand him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practicing?" Good question. One can only presume that American football games are not broadcast in Saudi Arabia; what would this fellow make of the NFL's endzone dances? Maybe a dose of such puritanical rigor would be good thing for our professional athletes. I, for one, think that the sight of a swarm of angry mujahideen storming the field to experctorate on those grand-standing thugs would be a wholly edifying spectacle. (A translation of the complete text of the fatwa is printed in the New York Times)