Anand Ram­per­sad

Re­li­gion has had both a pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive re­la­tion­ship with sport. Both re­li­gion and sport have been built up­on a pos­i­tive ethos of com­mit­ment to hard work, per­son­al sac­ri­fice, fair­ness and achieve­ment.

They both in­cor­po­rate the use of rit­u­als and cus­toms and it is com­mon to see the ap­peal to God in train­ing, team meet­ings and in the cel­e­bra­tion of suc­cess and even fail­ure.

It has al­so been ar­gued that the spir­it of com­pet­i­tive sport has some­times weak­ened the spir­i­tu­al bond of peo­ple both as ac­tive and pas­sive sport par­tic­i­pants.

In the Chris­t­ian dom­i­nat­ed US, Woods (2007) ar­gues that re­li­gion has been used as a means to jus­ti­fy Amer­i­can pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with sport. Not on­ly is sport seen as hav­ing an ap­peal to God, it has al­so been a means through which re­li­gious bod­ies have used sport to re­in­force its mem­ber­ship. For in­stance, Woods (2007) cites the Young Men's Chris­t­ian As­so­ci­a­tion (YM­CA), sec­ondary schools such as Christ the King and uni­ver­si­ties such as Oral Roberts Uni­ver­si­ty use sports through the pro­vi­sion of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and ex­cel­lent sport­ing pro­grammes to at­tract new mem­bers, stu­dents and even donors.

Ama­ra (2008) cites that sport has been able to mo­bilise na­tion­al­ist sup­port through­out the Mus­lim world cut­ting across class, gen­der and sec­tar­i­an dif­fer­ences. She ar­gues that mod­ern sport and Is­lam can co­ex­ist in the same world. How­ev­er, she claims that sport has to be seen as a site for the ne­go­ti­a­tion of dif­fer­ences which can en­hance cross cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences. This ap­proach has the po­ten­tial to min­imise the clash of west­ern and tra­di­tion­al val­ue sys­tems which has been the source of some of the con­tro­ver­sies in sports par­tic­i­pa­tion as it re­lates to the ath­letes from the Mus­lim world.

In an in-depth study of eight schools in West Mid­lands, Eng­land, to gain an un­der­stand­ing as to why Mus­lim girls were with­draw­ing from phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, Da­gakasa et al. (2011) con­clud­ed that re­li­gious con­cerns of the girls need­ed to be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the schools' poli­cies as well as in its phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes.

Some of the spe­cif­ic prob­lems that were iden­ti­fied by the stu­dents and their par­ents were the lack of flex­i­ble dress codes es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lat­ed to the wear­ing of the hi­jab and the use of pub­lic swim­ming pools. Da­gakasa ar­gued that a more em­brac­ing sport pol­i­cy would al­low for the in­clu­sion of Mus­lim girls.

As stud­ies have been con­duct­ed else­where in the world, the same has to be done in T&T and the wider Caribbean. The ben­e­fits of un­der­stand­ing this link can be mul­ti­ple and ever­last­ing es­pe­cial­ly in a so­ci­ety that is high­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed along re­li­gious lines.

As re­search has in­di­cat­ed, fe­males are more like­ly than males to be re­strict­ed from par­tic­i­pat­ing in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties as they are ex­pect­ed to be the prime bear­ers of re­li­gious val­ues and prac­tices. Out­side of en­gag­ing in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties for recre­ation­al and fun rea­sons, many tal­ent­ed per­sons may be dis­cour­aged from tak­ing part in sport se­ri­ous­ly be­cause of in­sen­si­tiv­i­ties to re­li­gious di­ver­si­ty in ex­ist­ing sport­ing pro­grammes.

As such in for­mal set­tings such as schools, once a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of how re­li­gious be­liefs and prac­tices im­pact up­on how stu­dents view and en­gage sports, prop­er in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies can be un­der­tak­en. These strate­gies can be help­ful to phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers, par­ents and most im­por­tant­ly the stu­dents.

Lo­cal re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions must al­so look to put greater ef­fort at en­cour­ag­ing their fol­low­ers young and old to par­tic­i­pate in sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Not on­ly would such ac­tiv­i­ties ben­e­fit the in­di­vid­u­als per­son­al­ly, but col­lec­tive­ly it can be a means through which re­li­gious groups can fur­ther con­nect with their mem­bers. As much as com­pe­ti­tion and win­ning is im­por­tant, sports can al­so me a good means through which re­li­gious bod­ies can teach im­por­tant life lessons to their mem­bers.

At the end of the day it would not be sur­pris­ing to hear some sport ad­min­is­tra­tors claim that re­li­gion is not their busi­ness but many gov­ern­ing bod­ies are adopt­ing mea­sures that re­flects some de­gree of un­der­stand­ing of dif­fer­ences in re­li­gious be­liefs of sport per­son­nel. A per­fect ex­am­ple of this is the de­ci­sion by FI­FA to al­low for re­li­gious head wear to be worn by play­ers. Such a move not on­ly recog­nis­es the dif­fer­ence in re­li­gious be­liefs but al­so paves the way for more per­sons to come for­ward to par­tic­i­pate in foot­ball.

Re­li­gion, when com­bined with oth­er vari­ables such as so­cial class, fam­i­ly, school and com­mu­ni­ty does im­pact on the lev­el and ex­tent of par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. As such sport­ing au­thor­i­ties such as the Min­istry of Sport, sport­ing bod­ies and re­searchers should em­bark up­on projects aimed at gain­ing a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of the con­nec­tion be­tween re­li­gion and sport.

The out­comes can lay the foun­da­tions for en­cour­ag­ing greater sport­ing and recre­ation­al par­tic­i­pa­tion among the pop­u­la­tion while at the same time pos­si­bly un­earthing some new tal­ent­ed sports­men and women.