Did a referee drop the ball on a patka-wearing soccer player?
by Robin Roberts
Source: http://www.mehfilmagazine.com – Mehfil Magazine
When is soccer not a ball? When you get a yellow card (caution), certainly. When you get a red card (expulsion), absolutely. When you’re penalized for wearing a religious head covering, you’re definitely not having fun any more. That’s what happened to 17-year-old Gurinder Dhah over the Labour Day weekend. He had travelled with his teammates, Calgary Northwest United Inter, to Langley to compete along with more than 200 other teams in Western Canada’s premiere soccer event. All were looking forward to three days of fun and footy when fair play quickly turned foul. Gurinder jogged onto the field wearing his patka, as he always has, to no objection at first. According to Gurinder’s uncle, Gurmit Dhah, They played the first game and no one said a thing, he recalls. In the second game, [officials] called the rules and that was when they asked him to take his patka off if he wanted to play. He said, ÔYou must be kidding?’ The ref said no, he was serious.
Gurinder shot a few choice words at the ref, which earned him the dreaded red card. He stormed off the field with his teammates close behind. Game over. I’ve been playing for about 11 years and I’d never encountered this before, says the Calgary youth, who plays midfield and defense. I was just furious, just outraged. My coach was shocked, too. He actually thought it was a joke. He told me to keep quiet, but I was very angry and couldn’t help myself. I don’t regret [swearing at the ref]. I had to take it out on somebody.
Nowhere in FIFA’s Laws of the Game, which all clubs follow, is it stated that the wearing of religious head coverings is prohibited. Unless they received an apology from the B.C. Soccer Association, Gurinder and his uncle planned to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission and launch a human rights violation lawsuit The apology may be good enough. If we’re happy with that we won’t do anything else, but we haven’t seen anything, says Gurmit. A little more than a week after the incident, an apology was issued, but not to Gurinder personally.
The apology went to the Calgary Minor Soccer Association from the B.C. Soccer Association, says Gurmit. But we were expecting that they should be apologizing to the team and to the individual, my nephew. And they haven’t done so. So I spoke to my lawyer and we will file a human rights complaint and we will be filing for damages for the whole team for the time they didn’t play [each player spent about $1,000 in travel expenses]. They admitted they made a mistake but they did not direct the apology to the club itself. It was very vague. It’s not satisfactory to us or to the club. They say they’re still investigating but we don’t know when that will be over. We’re not going to wait.
The ref in question has not been named, nor has he been made available to the media. He remains on the job while the B.C. Soccer Association continues its investigation. Every referee is empowered by the laws of the game to apply and interpret the laws at the local level, Keith Ryan, executive director of the B.C. Soccer Association, tells Mehfil. Officials have taken that interpretation and applied it to the religious head gear that was worn in Langley and they did so incorrectly. A referee needs to look at the head covering and make a good, sensible judgment and not make the type of interpretation they made, which was ridiculous. We were absolutely shocked and mortified that an interpretation of this nature took place, and we are doing everything in our powers to make sure that the communication now is rectified and is clear.
Whether the incident was a misinterpretation of the rules which state that nothing may be worn that poses a danger to a player or flat out racism is anyone’s guess. Not surprisingly, there’s no shortage of opinions on that. I think it may have been racism, says Gurinder.
I wish I could get in their head to see what they were thinking, says Gurmit, who maintains that, in addition to the referee who made the call, there was an older assessor who backed him up. Then, the ref from the first game who said nothing, told Gurinder the next day, You snuck one by me yesterday, relays Gurmit. That makes three referees in this one tournament who believe rules exist that prevent Sikh players from wearing patkas. Are they really following the rules? Or was this some sort of racial thing, wonders Gurmit.
Davinder Rakhra, assistant coach for the Burnaby-New West affiliate of the Hurricanes, doesn’t believe racism is at issue here. I don’t think it was discrimination in any way, personally, he says. As far as the Sikh community is concerned, a lot of them felt it was a racism issue. However, in the venue I followed on e-mail with quite a few people, I don’t think they felt that racism was a factor in this, it was more of, ‘Gee, this incident happened and we have to stand up and clarify that this is not a turban, nor should this incident be ignored in any way.’ We need to make the BC Soccer Association aware that people have been playing with patkas for the past 10, 20 years and this has never been an issue before.
As for a lawsuit, Rakhra says, There are no grounds for it. The admission is there. It would be very foolish for anyone to follow suit in this regard, I would say. A lot of people do tend to jump the gun a bit because we are a minority, but you have to give the benefit of the doubt to others who may not be familiar with your religion, your culture, your ways of life. I think it’s an educational priority for us as a minority and I think the whole purpose of the community is really to educate those who perhaps didn’t know. That includes the referee.
Indeed, there have been those in the community who work to ensure the mainstream population realizes religious head coverings pose no danger or barrier to carrying out duties, whether they be work or play. Hari Sharma, Professor Emeritus, Sociology, SFU, and president of South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, says he wouldn’t know what the referee’s basis was unless he talked to him. The fact is, this society has come a long way in accepting that the turban for people of the Sikh faith does not necessarily compromise their ability to function in the army, as a bus driver and on and on, so why would it be for a person playing soccer? he asks.
Which goes back to Keith Ryan of the BC Soccer Association, who insists there is no such ruling that prevents a player from wearing a religious symbol that does not endanger himself or another player (as noted in the highlighted FIFA rules, although the words religious headgear together are not specified anywhere in FIFA’s Laws of the Game). We’re hoping people understand that our association never developed this rule, has no such rule and would never even consider such a rule, he says. We have a sport that welcomes multiculturalism. We have a sport that puts cultures together and whenever you put cultures together sometimes you get friction. And in this incident someone made a local decision and unfortunately the backlash has been very much focused on our association and we’ve been disturbed by that. We’re very saddened by it. Our rules are meant to promote the safety of players, not to facilitate discrimination. And we would defy anyone to show us where we’ve developed a situation or a regulation in support of discrimination. People’s passions have been inflamed by this and that’s completely understandable. If we need to come up with a structure or process that prevents this type of situation from happening again, that’s what we hope this [investigation] achieves.
Meanwhile, Gurmit and Gurinder Dhah just want their apology. They also don’t want to see any other player go through what Gurinder endured. Bottom line, we just never want to see this come up again, says Gurmit. We would like that to be resolved for good. That’s our hope and wish.
