KTLA News

Disney officials say they stopped putting Imane Boudlal on the schedule during the ongoing issue.

The hotel workers’ union claims that Boudlal, a restaurant hostess at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, was suspended without pay.

Disney officials deny that Boudlal was suspended, saying that they stopped putting her on the schedule while the matter is ongoing, said Suzi Brown, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman.

On Tuesday, Boudlal rejected a third, alternative head covering that Disney provided and she was sent home for the eighth time.

Disney previously offered Boudlal four other assignments that would allow her to wear her own head scarf, called a hijab, which some Muslim women wear as a form of modesty.

Disney is known for its strict dress code, called the Disney Look.

Boudlal, through the union, described the most recent head covering as an over-sized chef’s hat. She previously rejected a hat over a bonnet.

“The hat makes a joke of my religion and draws even more attention to me,” Boudlal says. “It’s unacceptable. They don’t want me to look Muslim,” Boudlal says. “They just don’t want the head covering to look like a hijab.”

Two months ago, Boudlal told her managers she wanted a “religious accommodation” to the company’s dress code to wear the scarf to work during the holy month of Ramadan and beyond. Disney, however, refused Boudlal says.

On August 15, Boudlal wore her hijab to work but was told that if she wanted to work as a hostess she would have to remove the head scarf. Disney told her she could work in the back of the restaurant — away from customers — or go home without pay. Boudlal chose to go home.

Disney says the company has very strict uniform rules.

“Typically, somebody in an on-stage position like hers wouldn’t wear something like that, that’s not part of the costume,” Brown said. “We were trying to accommodate her with a backstage position that would allow her to work. We gave her a couple of different options and she chose not to take those and to go home.”

Boudlal says she doesn’t understand why she cannot wear her scarf to work. “My scarf doesn’t do anything to harm Disney or the guests.”

She filed a discriminaton complaint against Disney with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week.

Boudial has worked at Disneyland for two and a half years, but didn’t try to wear the hijab to work until a week ago.

She is an immigrant from Morocco and has been in the United States for five years. She became a U.S. citizen in June.

After being granted her citizenship, Boudlal decided to challenge Disney’s strict clothing rules. She says the U.S. Constitution grants everyone religious freedom and that right applies in this case.

“The Constitution tells me I can be Muslim, and I can wear the head scarf,” Boudial says.

“Who is Disney to tell me I cannot?”

News Channel 5

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A U.S. Army soldier wants to leave the military service as a conscientious objector based on his beliefs as a Muslim, but he’s concerned he may be deployed to Afghanistan anyway.

Pfc. Naser Abdo, a 20-year-old infantryman assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., said Monday that if the military orders him to deploy, he will refuse to go despite the fact that it may result in a military charge against him.

Rick Rzepka, a Fort Campbell spokesman, said Abdo’s deployment has been deferred, but the military could deploy him while a decision was being made on his request.

Abdo said when he joined the Army more than a year ago, he initially felt he could be a soldier and a Muslim at the same time. But he said he now believes Islamic standards would prohibit his service in the U.S. Army in any war.

——————————

Sure hope someone is watching this Muslim dickweed closely because the politically correct military sure as shit won’t.

CBN News

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – The proposed mega-mosque at Ground Zero has sparked outrage among many Americans. But far from the bright lights of Manhattan, there is another mosque firestorm brewing.

CBN News recently visited one Tennessee town where locals are voicing concerns about their new “neighbor” – a multi-million dollar Islamic center. It’s just one of several such projects planned nationwide.

Middle Tennessee is often referred to as the “buckle” of the Bible Belt. For cities and towns there like Murfreesboro — about 30 miles south of Nashville — it’s still about God and country.

But some residents of Murfreesboro believe that that all-American feel may soon disappear, thanks to plans to build a huge Islamic center in their backyard.

“Within 17 days they had approval to build this mosque, when there are other large congregations here in the community who, some took as much as a year and a half to get the approval to build onto their facilities,” said local activist Laurie Cardoza-Moore, who is president of the pro-Israel group, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations.

No Public Debate

Cardoza-Moore told CBN News that Rutherford County commissioners pushed through the mega-mosque with no public debate or input. She said residents were shocked when they learned about the project:

“We were asking our country commissioners, ‘Please, before we start and give the approval for a mega mosque, a 52,000-square foot facility for 200 people, can we please look into some of the people affiliated – the donors, who is going to fund this mosque?’”

Many asked why a small Islamic community of only about 250 families needs what would be one of the largest mosque complexes in America.

The imam of the Murfreesboro Islamic Center said the current location in too small, and that his congregation needs to move. Their preferred destination is located a few miles away – 15.2 acres of land that will include a mega-mosque, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, an Islamic school, and living quarters for the imam.

“We’ve treated every particular religious organization exactly the same way,” Rutherford County mayor Ernest Burgess said.
 
Burgess told CBN News he has no reason to believe the mosque’s leaders have “any ill intent.”

“We have a Buddhist temple here,” he said. “We have a Hindu temple here. I mean, we have, I believe, still based on our constitutional rights, the ability for people to worship the way they want to worship.”

Questions on Mosque Leaders

Yet serious concerns have been raised about imam Osama Bahloul and at least one board member of the Murfreesboro Islamic Center. Bahloul is a “distinguished graduate” of al-Azhar University in Egypt, where anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric is commonplace.

He told CBN News off camera that he condemned the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah and that Murfreesboro Muslims were just looking for a quiet place to worship. Yet he declined to appear on camera.

Then there is Islamic Center board member Mosaad Rawash.

Rawash was suspended from the board after pro-jihad slogans were found on his MySpace page. They’ve since been removed. A mosque spokesman said that Rawash is back on the board after being cleared of any wrongdoing.

Locals also have other concerns–like where the millions of dollars are coming from to pay for the proposed complex

Mosque officials say the money was raised in the community. But local journalist Rebecca Bynum said she isn’t convinced.

“In other mosques, like in Boston and other areas where there’s been huge mosques built, the funding did come from overseas, principally from Saudi Arabia, rich individuals from countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” she said.

Murfreesboro is not alone. two more mega-mosques are now being planned for Tennessee–one in Memphis and another the town of Antioch, near Nashville.

“It does seem to be part of a larger strategy to build mosques in rural areas and create Islamic communities–large Islamic communities–in rural areas for some larger purpose,” said Bynum, a columnist for the New English Review.

Fighting Christian ‘Crusaders’
 
Cardoza-Moore believes the purpose is clear in middle Tennessee.

“You have Bible book publishers, you have Christian book publishers, you have Christian music headquartered here,” she said. “So this is where the Gospel message goes out. And the radical Islamic extremists have stated that they’re still fighting the Crusaders–and they see this as the capital of the Crusaders.”

Mega-mosques are now in the works from coast to coast. In addition to the three massive Islamic centers in Tennessee, the proposed Ground Zero mosque continues to stir fierce debate.

One mosque plan was recently shot down in nearby Staten Island, New York. But a large mosque is currently in the works in neighboring Brooklyn.

In Sheboygan, Wisc. and Portland, Ore., 2 multi-million mosque projects have been given the green light. Another opened last year outside Boston and a $10 million complex opened in Atlanta in 2008.

Meanwhile, neighbors are protesting planned mosques in Southern California and the Chicago suburbs. And there are now plans to build the first ever Islamic center in northern Kentucky.

“When a large mosque is built, it draws more Muslims to the area,” said Bynum.

Mosque Funding?

It’s been estimated that as many as 80 percent of American mosques have received funds from Saudi Arabia, where the official state religion is radical Wahhabi Islam.

Intelligence sources tell CBN News that many American mosques have been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood–an Islamist movement that seeks to establish Islamic sharia law worldwide.

We asked Mayor Burgess if he and the Murfreesboro county commission were aware of these points.

“I’m not informed about that, I don’t have any evidence,” he answered.

“Don’t you think you should be informed, though?” CBN News asked.  

“As a basic citizen, I should be informed about every issue that I can be,” Burgess said. “But I can only enforce this rules and regulations that the state of Tennessee and the United States and Rutherford County have authorized me to enforce.”

Taking a Second Look

The County commission is now taking a second look at local residents’ concerns about the mosque project, including the environmental impact and traffic flow that would result.

There are also complaints about an unmarked grave that has appeared on the Islamic Center’s new property.

“We don’t know anything about the body other than it was wrapped–it’s not in a casket, it’s not embalmed, it’s not in a vault,” said local activist Kevin Fisher.

Mosque officials told us they know who is buried there, but did not give us a name. Mayor Burgess said. “The burial was legal.

But others say it’s further proof that a massive Islamic center is not a good fit in their community.

“I think we will stop this mosque from being built,” said Cardoza-Moore.

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Heads_Up Family Security Matters

El Paso Times

By GILLIAN FLACCUS–Associated Press Writer

ANAHEIM, Calif.—A Muslim woman who works as a hostess at a Disneyland restaurant alleged Wednesday the theme park would not allow her to appear in front of customers while wearing her head scarf.

Imane Boudlal, 26, appeared outside the resort’s Grand Californian Hotel after filing a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

She said when she wore the hijab to work Sunday, her supervisors told her to remove it, work where customers couldn’t see her, or go home.

Boudlal, who wore the scarf in observance of Ramadan, chose to go home but reported to work for the next two days and was told the same thing.

“Miss Boudlal has effectively understood that they’re not interested in accommodating her request either in timing or good faith,” said Ameena Qazi, an attorney from the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is consulting with Boudlal.

Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown said Disney has a policy not to discriminate and offered Boudlal a chance to work with the head covering away from customers.

Qazi said Boudlal has worked at the Storyteller restaurant at the hotel for 2 1/2 years but only realized she could wear her hijab to work after studying for her U.S. citizenship exam in June.

She asked her supervisors if she could wear the scarf and was told they would consult with the corporate office, Qazi said. Boudlal didn’t hear anything for two months and was then told she could wear a head scarf, but it 

had to be designed by Disneyland’s costume department to comply with the Disney look, Qazi said.

She was fitted for a Disney-supplied head scarf but was not given a date when the garment would be finished and was told she couldn’t wear her own hijab in the interim.

Boudlal wore her own hijab to work for the first time Sunday.

“After these two months and this complicated process, she decided to come forward,” Qazi said. “She really wanted to be able to wear it on Ramadan.”

Boudlal has the support of her union, which has been in a bitter fight for months with Disneyland over an expired contract for hotel workers.

Leigh Shelton, a spokeswoman for the union, said Boudlal’s coming forward now had nothing to do with the contract negotiations.

“There’s absolutely no correlation,” said Shelton, who’s with Unite Here Local 11.

ESPN.com

DEARBORN, Mich. — A Michigan high school football team is holding preseason practices in the middle of the night to help its Muslim players practice both faith and football.

The predominantly Muslim squad from Dearborn says the nocturnal regimen is a way for players to eat and drink while observing the holy month of daytime fasting known as Ramadan that started last week.

The August heat also played a factor in Fordson High coach Fouad Zaban’s proposal to reverse the clock for a week of two-a-day practices.

Cutting practice wasn’t an option at football-crazy Fordson, which is coming off a one-loss season and has won four state titles and three runner-up seasons since it was established in 1928.

But nobody wanted to lessen the significance of Ramadan in the Detroit suburb widely known as the capital of Arab-America.

The moonlight practice is tailored for Adnan Restum and fellow Muslim teammates.

Illuminated by the night lights on the football field, Restum recently joined a scrum of teammates at the end-zone water fountain, taking a break from a grueling preseason football workout to guzzle a drink.

In just a few hours, he wouldn’t be able to take a sip. But the 17-year-old defensive tackle could rehydrate guilt-free during the 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. practice, and succumb to tempting boxes full of granola bars and chocolate milk, too.

“It feels really great,” said Restum, who has been fasting since he was about 10. “If we’re doing it during the day, we wouldn’t have water and it would be really hot and everything.”

Zaban proposed the late practices after realizing the rotating Ramadan would fall squarely during the start of a two-a-day practice schedule that launches football season.

Zaban, 40, a Muslim and former Fordson player, knows the high stakes. When Ramadan falls during football season, the players practice during daylight hours. But with August’s heat and doubled practice schedule, concerns grew about players’ health, particularly the high risk of heat stroke.

“We know how hot it’s been this summer — it’s not safe,” Zaban said.

Working it out meant getting the approval of school and district administrators and the blessings of players, parents and police. Then, there were the residents in the surrounding neighborhood, who would hear more noise and see the illuminated field. So he sent letters explaining the decision.

Zaban is unaware of such schedule switches elsewhere, though other teams at the school and in the district have moved practices earlier or later in the day. It’s been more than three decades since Ramadan last fell during football preseason and Fordson’s Muslim population was far smaller then — and, he notes, there were no field lights.

Zaban said the goal has been to let players break the fast at sundown and go to the mosque, and get players out in time for a meal and morning prayer before sunrise. The field is near bustling bakeries, cafes and restaurants catering to late-night customers.

But first, there are drills.

“Keep running! Heads up!” Zaban yelled while leading a passing drill. And, when a receiver flubbed a one-handed catch, the coach barked, “Hey, two hands!” The result was 20 push-ups.

Zaban said whether players fast is a personal choice and never an issue raised by him or his staff. Still, he says, it shouldn’t be an excuse for poor performance for the roughly 95 percent who do.

He ended the session before 4 a.m. with a message to the huddled, padded masses to “drink lots of water,” “get a good meal in,” and “man up.”

Defensive tackle William Powell, one of the team’s few non-Muslims, initially thought the coach was “out of his mind,” but he’s come around. In fact, he’s even fasted.

“I’m around ‘em, so I’ve tried a couple times but it’s hard,” the 17-year-old said.

For Rami Fakih, a wide receiver and defensive back, the nocturnal regimen has taken some adjustment but for different reasons. The brother of recently crowned Miss USA Rima Fakih said he had to think twice before hitting the fountain.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Then I remembered, you know. I looked up. There’s no sun. I can drink. I can eat.”

With that, he walked off the field and into the darkness with plans to grab a quick bite with friends at a local bakery.

Andrew C. McCarthy

It is “financial jihad,” explained Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s sharia compass — and the man Feisal Rauf, the brains behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque, admires as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” It was 2002 and Qaradawi, who endorses suicide bombing and the targeting of American personnel operating in Islamic countries, was giving a lecture on the need to use the international financial system to support Islamist goals — like Hamas’s war to destroy Israel.

The financial jihad has now achieved its greatest coup so far: It has co-opted the U.S. government as a partner. In fact, if you would like to see a contributor to the jihad, have a look in the mirror. Thanks to the Obama administration, every one of us is complicit. The bailout bonanza made each of us an owner of American Insurance Group (AIG). Under the stewardship of its real CEO, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, AIG proudly runs the world’s most lavishly funded sharia-compliant insurance business — and it is desperately trying to convince a federal court in Michigan that no one should have a problem with that.

Sharia-compliant finance (SCF) is now a thriving American industry. Sharia is Islam’s authoritarian legal framework. It aspires to control not merely spiritual life but all aspects of society, including economic matters. The purpose of SCF is to advance that mission in two important ways.

First, SCF legitimizes the incorporation of sharia into our legal system, despite the fact that many features of Islamic law are anti-constitutional. That is, once sharia governance is accepted in principle, Islamists shrewdly figure the skids are greased for imposing sharia tenets on other aspects of our national life (e.g., domestic relations, employment matters, criminal law, etc.). Second, because sharia is a discriminatory system, SCF promotes Islamist ideology and enriches Muslims at the expense of non-Muslims by controlling investments and “purging” interest.

Companies that practice SCF, including AIG, retain advisory boards of sharia experts. These boards, which often include Islamist ideologues, tell the companies which investments are permissible (halal) and which are not (haram). AIG’s “Shariah Supervisory Committee” includes a Pakistani named Imran Ashraf Usmani, who is the son and student of Taqi Usmani, a top cleric (a “mufti”) and a globally renowned sharia-finance authority. The mufti is author of a book that features a chapter urging Muslims in the West to engage in jihad against the countries in which they live.

In the insurance business, those who purchase policies pay premiums, which insurers like AIG then invest. To be sharia-compliant, investments must not be made in enterprises Islam forbids, e.g., finance (because it makes money off interest, which sharia prohibits), pork, gambling, alcohol, etc. Sounds harmless enough . . . except forbidden enterprises would also include businesses that support or otherwise work with the U.S. armed forces. Islamists consider our military to be an “infidel force” that is “at war with Islam.”

Because sharia bars interest (although it permits “profits” that Islamic authorities, in their infinite wisdom, deem reasonable), SCF requires that investments be constantly monitored and that any interest payments be purged. This is done by skimming off a percentage that is then channeled — at the direction of the advisory board — to an Islamic “charity.” Of course, as no one knows better than the Treasury Department, many such charities are merely fronts for the financing of terrorist organizations. This is not an accident. When Sheikh Qaradawi speaks of “financial jihad” as an Islamic obligation, he’s not kidding: In Islamist ideology, funding those who “fight in Allah’s cause” — e.g., Hamas — is one of the eight categories of permissible zakat, the Muslim obligation of almsgiving.

So, an American company that practices SCF is, wittingly or not, advancing the jihadist agenda: It will deny financing to enterprises that help our military combat terrorists while running the risk that its sharia advisers will steer funding to those same terrorists. That aside, the portrayal by President Obama and others of zakat as “charitable giving” is a misconception. According to the most influential Islamic authorities, zakat can be given only to Muslims. It is not an extension of one’s hand to the world’s most needy; it is an insular duty to fortify the ummah, the notional Islamic nation. Consequently, the purging of interest is nothing more than a redistribution of wealth from non-Muslims to Muslims.

Like many bad ideas, SCF was vigorously promoted by the academy, particularly Harvard under then-president Lawrence Summers (former Clinton Treasury secretary and now National Economic Council director) and law-school dean Elena Kagan (Obama’s recently confirmed nominee to the Supreme Court). The Harvard scholars behind SCF were Samuel Hayes of the business school and Frank Vogel, director of the law school’s “Islamic legal studies” program. In 1998, Vogel and Hayes co-authored the seminal SCF textbook, Islamic Law and Finance: Religion, Risk, and Return.

The book relates that “the structure of Islamic finance is firmly rooted in the Qur’an and the teachings of Muhammad.” SCF, unabashedly, is the promotion of Islam. Its “central tenets” lie in “the religious law of Islam concerning commercial dealings.” Its advisory boards are there “to review all proposed transactions for conformity with religious law.” Indeed, the authors concede, “the raison d’etre for the practice of Islamic finance is undeniably religious.”

Moreover, given that Islam is not merely a religion but a comprehensive social system that rejects the separation of the spiritual realm from secular matters, SCF is necessarily a political mission. Hayes and Vogel state without apology that “the surge in Islamic banking and finance is part of the much larger phenomenon of Islamic reassertion.” SCF is “an assertion of religious law in the area of commercial life, where secularism rules almost unquestioned throughout the rest of the world.” It quite intentionally challenges both “the presumption that modern commercial mores are per se more efficient or otherwise superior” and “the secular separation of commerce from consideration of religion and piety.”

That is a big problem for AIG under Uncle Sam’s management. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause has been construed to bar government action (including government underwriting of action) that is “pervasively sectarian.” Under our jurisprudence, the state is forbidden to act if its “secular purposes” are “inextricably intertwined” with a “religious mission,” as the Supreme Court put it in Bowen v. Kendrick (1988). SCF is Islamic proselytism, and our law prohibits the “active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity” — so said the high court in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971).

The Thomas More Law Center has filed a lawsuit against Secretary Geithner and the Treasury Department, seeking to shut down AIG’s SCF business while that business is owned by the taxpayers. In response, the Obama administration has hilariously denied that SCF is really an “Islamic religious activity.” Someone will need to break that news to Professor Hayes, the guy who wrote that “the raison d’etre for the practice of Islamic finance is undeniably religious.” When the Treasury Department co-hosted a Harvard SCF seminar less than two years ago, it chose none other than Hayes to preside.

Treasury also counters that the public money used for AIG’s SCF programs is trivial. That is specious. Geithner has committed $70 billion of our money to AIG. Of this amount, the lawsuit has demonstrated that nearly $1 billion was poured directly into AIG’s SCF businesses, and billions more are available for diversion. How much public money is actually promoting sharia finance may be impossible to say with certainty. AIG jointly operates many of its branch offices, using consolidated accounting and non-segregated bank accounts. Neither the government nor AIG has ever issued any regulations or created any firewalls to prevent American taxpayer money from underwriting SCF activities.

The Obama administration could have suspended AIG’s promotion of sharia finance in order to protect constitutional norms. But, of course, if it were interested in constitutional norms, it would neither be running private companies nor embracing Islamists and their law. So congratulations: You get to fund the jihad, while the jihad gets to target you.

What country is he talking about?

The Washington Times Editorial

President Obama says Islam has always been part of America, which raises the question, does the president know something about American history that we don’t?

It has become customary for presidents to offer greetings to various religious communities on the occasion of their most holy days. Presidents Ford and Carter both issued Ramadan messages, as did Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. The Ramadan greeting became intensely political during Mr. Bush’s tenure because he was seeking to dispel the charge that the war on terrorism was a crusade against Islam. But Mr. Obama has used the occasion of Ramadan to rewrite U.S. history and give Islam a prominence in American annals that it has not earned.

In this year’s greeting, Mr. Obama said the rituals of Ramadan “remind us of the principles that we hold in common and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”

That Islam has had a major role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings may come as a surprise to Muslim women. Young Afghan girls who are having acid thrown in their faces on the way to school might want to offer their perspectives. That Islam is “known” for diversity and racial equality is also a bit of a reach. This certainly does not refer to religious diversity, which is nonexistent in many Muslim-majority states. This is a plaudit better reserved for a speech at the opening of a synagogue in Mecca.

Most puzzling is the president’s claim that “Islam has always been part of America.” Islam had no influence on the origins and development of the United States. It contributed nothing to early American political culture, art, literature, music or any other aspect of the early nation.

Throughout most of American history, the Muslim world was perceived as remote, alien and belligerent. Perhaps the president was thinking about the Barbary Pirates and their role in the founding of the U.S. Navy, or Andrew Jackson’s dispatch of frigates against Muslim pirates in Sumatra in the 1830s. Maybe he was recalling Rutherford B. Hayes’ 1880 statement regarding Morocco on “the necessity, in accordance with the humane and enlightened spirit of the age, of putting an end to the persecutions, which have been so prevalent in that country, of persons of a faith other than the Moslem, and especially of the Hebrew residents of Morocco.” Or Grover Cleveland’s 1896 comment on the continuing massacre of Armenian Christians: “We have been afflicted by continued and not infrequent reports of the wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women and children, made martyrs to their profession of Christian faith. … It so mars the humane and enlightened civilization that belongs to the close of the nineteenth century that it seems hardly possible that the earnest demand of good people throughout the Christian world for its corrective treatment will remain unanswered.”

It also is customary in the United States to search for obscure contributions made by in-vogue minority groups as a feel-good way of promoting inclusion. One of the earliest Muslims to come to the United States was a 17th-century Egyptian named Norsereddin, who settled in the Catskills and was described by one chronicler as “haughty, morose, unprincipled, cruel and dissipated.” Spurned by the princess of an Indian tribe that had befriended him, he managed through a subterfuge to poison her. He was later run down by the betrayed Indians, who burned him alive. It is not the kind of tale that makes it into politically correct history books.

Paul L. Williams, Ph.D.

By Nick Pisa

If the rugby-playing women of Iran’s national sevens team had cauliflower ears, no-one could tell.

Kitted out in tight-fitting headscarves and full tracksuits to protect their modesty, the players caused quite a stir when they played in Europe for the first time.

Taking to the field in a women’s seven-a-side tournament in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, they were dealt a 10-0 by the host nation and then suffered a further 33-0 setback in a second game.

Representing Iran: Female coach Fatemeh Moolai, with arm raised, talks to her players during the women’s rugby sevens tournament where the Iran team appeared in Europe for the first time

But the players, whose hands and faces were the only areas of skin on public view, bounced back, defeating local side Valsugana 10-3.

In all the matches the team played wearing the ‘maghnaeh’, a veil that fully covers the head, shoulders and neck, along with red tracksuit tops and bottoms.

A quarter of a century ago, in the early years of the 1979 Islamic revolution when competitive sports for women were strongly discouraged, it would have been unthinkable for Iranian women to play a sport as physical as rugby. 

Iranian team coach Fatme Molai, who has been in the job for four years, said: ‘Wearing a veil does not change our method of play – clothes are something you wear and don’t influence what you know how to do.

‘To be honest the federation are looking at other head covers which are perhaps more practical.

‘This was our first tournament in Europe and although we didn’t win as we did in Laos and Thailand I am very happy.’

 

On the ball: Iran’s Zohre Eyni, left, is challenged by Italy’s Sara Pettinelli during the clash which Italy won

 

Arrival: The team enters the playing field for the ‘Cortina’ seven-a-side tournament

Captain Zohre Eyni, 22, said: ‘First I played football but I now play rugby as I really enjoy it but my family are not so sure it is the right thing for a woman.

‘The whole team has learnt how to keep the veil in place so that it doesn’t interfere with play and I think we have shown that even a physical game like rugby can be played in a veil.

‘There are no risks playing in a veil, as I said what is important is that you arrange it safe and well, what you have to be careful with is losing your tracksuit bottoms in a tackle or scrum.’

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Alireza Iraj, Tehran women’s rugby coach, said as a man he had to stick with one of Iran’s Islamic rules which states that members of the opposite sex cannot touch each other unless they are married couples or immediate members of a family. 

 

Come back here: Iran’s Farzaneh Navab Rad, right, is challenged by Italy’s Federica Carlet

When advising the team on how to tackle, Iraj keeps a decent distance away from the women and then instructs one of the players to demonstrate how to grab an opponent rather than carrying out the move himself.

Women’s rugby was first introduced to Iran 10 years ago, and has grown in popularity ever since.

 

Safe hands: Iran’s Nazanin Ammanyan, left, is challenged by Italy’s Michela Este during the tournament