It didn’t take long for Grapevine-Colleyville ISD and Cy-Fair ISD to back off their offer of the use public school facilities to host the so-called “Islamic Games,” once it was revealed that one of the sponsors was the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has linked to foreign terrorists.
What’s harder to figure out is why anyone in these affluent school districts considered hosting an athletic event exclusively for Muslims in the first place. The website for the Islamic Games of Dallas calls its program the “premier athletic platform” for Muslim children in America, but there is no explanation of why we need a separate athletic platform for Muslin kids. Is it because of religion?
We don’t have “Presbyterian Games,” “Baptist Games,” or “Jewish Games” set aside for athletic programs for children of those faiths, although when large Catholic high schools compete around the country—Loyola and St. Ignatius in Chicago, for example and Central Catholic and Jesuit in Portland—it is always unofficially billed as the “Holy War.” But that’s just competition, not segregation.
We also don’t set aside “athletic platforms” for racial or ethnic groups. Hispanics, Asians and African Americans don’t have special athletic competitions. There are no “White People Games.” Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have several athletic conferences that are almost exclusively HBCUs, but many of those schools also participate in other NCAA conferences. And Black athletes are certainly not limited to those venues. The NCAA estimates that based on self-reporting, about 50% of Division 1 NCAA football and basketball players are African American.
The people of Texas, speaking through the Texas Legislature, have made it clear they don’t want our education programs divided by identity—race, gender, ethnicity or religion.
They want every student to be judged on his or her own merit, their initiative and their ability learn, progress and accomplish their goals. Nowhere is this more important than in sports, where teamwork, thinking under pressure, striving against the odds and listening to others are critical to success.
The NCAA doesn’t know how many Muslims or Jews participate in campus sports because they don’t keep records based on religion. But they estimate it’s about 1% for each group. To contrast the “Islamic Games” model, consider the great story about Jeff Retzlaff, the quarterback for Brigham Young University last season who was one of only three Jewish students on campus. BYU has a great football team and there were a number of stories about Retzlaff learning to become their leader, when many on his team had never met or talked to a Jewish person before. Retzlaff got a NIL deal from the kosher food processors, Manischewitz, raising his profile—and the profile of the Jewish community in college sports.
Retzlaff transferred to Tulane this season, a university that also has only a tiny number of Jewish students, where he played in a College Football Playoff game last month. We can be glad that Retzlaff wasn’t segregated off into some kind of “Jewish Games” athletic platform so he’d only play sports with other Jews. His non-Jewish teammates at both schools call their experience playing with him life-expanding.
The “Islamic Games,” aren’t about building any of that. They aren’t about leadership or athletic skills. Instead, they are one of many efforts by some in the Muslim community to block the assimilation of Muslim kids and the Muslim community into American culture and the larger American community.
As TPPF Board member Cody Campbell has repeatedly and clearly articulated, school sports are a big part of the glue that holds our communities together—where we all share the same values of working hard, fairness, achievement and merit. Sports are where our kids learn to think under pressure, where they learn to listen to people they may have nothing in common with other than the game, where they learn push to defy the odds, and where they make friendships that will last a lifetime.
None of that will happen at some weekend sports program at the local high school where the only kids allowed to participate are Muslim. Let’s assume the folks at Colleyville-Grapevine and CyFair were just trying to be nice, and hope they look more closely before they decide to host a program that only includes one religion, or one ethnic group or one race. Texans don’t support identity politics – or identity sports. That’s not who we are.
My colleague, Mandy Drogin, and a stunning panel of experts are going to discuss the issue of what the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR and others are doing to destabilize Texas and dismantle Western culture next Tuesday. CLICK HERE for more information.
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
The post “Islamic Games” are “Identity Sports” first appeared on Texas Public Policy Foundation.
