The Beautiful Game on a Muslim Pitch: How football and religion are shaping identity and society

Examines how football and religion act together to shape both identity and society in Muslim contexts • Highlights how the relationship between religion and football is acted and staged today in the Middle East and North Africa, and in Muslim contexts around the world • Posits football as an analytical window for examining broader geopolitical and social forces, such as national politics, religion, construction of identities, and social cohesion • One of the few academic studies on football and religion in a Muslim context • Brings together research by leading scholars in Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Religious Studies, History, Anthropology and Education This book showcases how football and religion are increasingly coming together in Muslim contexts to interact with and influence both identity and society. The first part of the volume is devoted to issues of identity, showing how football aids in its construction, maintenance and subversion. The second part reveals the deep-rooted connections between football and political and religious establishments by demonstrating how these establishments frequently use the game to disseminate or propagate their larger messages. Taken together, the book reveals how football has increasingly become a site for confrontations and negotiations over different understandings of religion - as a racial category, as gendered power, and as it is invested in issues of state politics.