Reuters Soccer Blog

Politics plays its part at the African Nations Cup

Being in Cabinda for the African Nations Cup should have been fun. At first, it was not, to say the least. The Togo team bus came under fire, with the assistant coach and a press officer being shot to death by a group of separatists as they were on their way to Cabinda from Pointe Noire, Congo.

It was only after long talks and multiple changes of minds that the Sparrowhawks decided to leave the Angolan northern enclave to fly back home and mourn their dead.

We would get calls from players saying they wanted to leave — that was on Saturday. Calls from the same players saying they wanted to stay after all — that was on Sunday.

Eventually, the prime minister got the last word, urging the Togo team to come back home. Until the last minute, some players tried to stay in Angola.

A plane sent by Togo touched down at Cabinda airport but it took off to Lome with the players on board only 10 hours later.

Angolan and Togolese officials locked themselves in a Cabinda airport office for hours as the host nation did all it could to try and persuade Togo to stay.

from FaithWorld:

Muslims angry at German soccer club over song

German Muslims have inundated one of the country's top soccer teams, Schalke 04, with complaints about a verse in the club's anthem which, they say, is disparaging towards the Prophet Mohammad.

The club has its home in Gelsenkirchen in Germany's industrial heartland and immigrants make up about a third of the town's population. Most of them have a Turkish background. Germany's biggest mosque was opened in nearby Duisburg last year and many Schalke supporters are Muslims, as chat rooms like this one point out.

The lines in question are: "Mohammad was a Prophet who doesn't understand football" although the words that follow seem positive: "But from all the beautiful colours he came up with blue and white." Schalke's colours are blue and white.

The club, which plays in Germany's Bundesliga top league and has some of the country's most ardent fans, is taking the complaints seriously. A spokesman has said Schalke has asked an Islamic expert to analyse the text.

But what is most striking is that the song is not new. Some say it dates back to 1924.  So why has it suddenly started to offend Muslims?

The answer may lie in the mounting resentment in Germany's Muslim community after politicians were slow to condemn the murder of an Egyptian woman in a court in eastern Germany about a month ago, which we blogged about at the time. The crime was widely viewed as racially motivated.

Germany's Central Council of Muslims has summed up the situation. "Many Muslims in Germany no longer have a sense of security. Nerves are wearing thin," General-Secretary Aiman Mazyek was quoted as saying in Bild daily, adding he did not believe the club had malicious intentions.