Assmaah Helal has broken barriers to reach football’s elite, but a controversial FIFA ban on Muslim women playing in the hijab means she may never realise her dream of wearing the Australian jersey. Helal, 25, was introduced to football by her Egyptian-born father when she was just five, and she was determined not to let gender keep her from joining her three brothers on the pitch. It was no easy task. Members of her Muslim community in western Sydney frowned on the idea of girls playing sport at all, much less a rough and tumble game which was, at that time, still very much a male domain. “I used to just get told I was a tomboy. In my culture, to play with the guys and to mix with guys was seen as not appropriate,” Helal told AFP. Helal now plays in the Super League, one step below the nation’s premier W-League for women, and says representing Australia in national side the Matildas would be her ultimate dream. But devout Muslim beliefs which see her don the hijab to play every weekend mean — for now — such a dream is out of reach.
FIFA banned players from wearing the Islamic headscarf in 2007, claiming it is unsafe, but Helal has never once experienced or heard of a hijab-related injury and has joined growing calls for the ban to be overturned. “I strongly believe that the ban is just outright discrimination,” she said of the headscarf, which she described as “a part of a Muslim woman’s identity which cannot be changed”. “At an international and an elite level, sports like taekwondo and rugby allow the headscarf to be worn during the competitive matches, and for the world game, for the universal language that is football, to ban the headscarf… it doesn’t make sense.”
