Monday, August 11, 2008
Iranian refuses to race Israeli swimmer in Beijing
Iran could face action over no-show at swimming
Don't worry, nothing to see here...the Iranian swimmer was simply "ill": IOC accepts explanation on Iranian swimmer
The International Olympic Committee has accepted the explanation of an Iranian swimmer who pulled out of an event that included an Israeli competitor.
Mohammad Alirezaei withdrew from the heats of the men's 100-meter breaststroke on Saturday just before he was due to compete against a field that included Israel's Tom Beeri. He cited illness as the reason.
Iran could have faced sanctions from the IOC if Alirezaei pulled out deliberately because an Israeli was also racing, but IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said Monday that no violation had been found.
"The athlete has withdrawn because of sickness," she said. "He confirmed this in writing to the swimming federation. We've also spoken with the national Olympic committee and they have underlined to us that all their athletes compete here in the right spirit against athletes from any nationality.
"We take both the athlete and the national Olympic committee at their word on this," she said...
Ah, neutrality....
It's known as a religious interdiction: "Najis"
For Shiites, “Water was considered the most common agent of pollution, therefore Jews were not permitted to use the public baths…The possibility that rain-water might splash off a Jew onto a Muslim led to the prohibition of Jews walking in public during the rain."
http://frontpagemag.com/articles...33- 1DEF0CE28773
However, the same impurity prohibition applies to all "giaours" (infidels), which begs the question: why was an Olympic hopeful swimmer sent by Iran in the first place? And why couldn't they pre-arrange, with the always so obliging IOC, to have the Iranian compete against only other Muslim swimmers?
How convenient for the Mullahs that Mohammad Alirezaei suddenly took ill at the last minute. I'm sure that he had a speedy recovery after the event and that he had a note from his doctor.
Can Noga's suggestion that he wasn't sick be true, that it was a pretext to avoid violating the halakha of not getting contaminated by a Jew's cooties? If so, wouldn't the Israeli's having used the pool make it Mohammad put himself in peril if he took a dip in the pool afterwards? Then again, maybe kufar cooties have a short shelf life or are dispatched by the pool's filter and chlorine in short order.
Click the link that follows for what Nappy hopes is the Front Page Magazine article Noga recommends. Or maybe it's in the comments here. Search on the page for "najis."
Nappy thinks it's probably somewhere else. FrontPageMag.com doesn't have a Search box, and it doesn't look the page with the URL fragment left out of Noga's link made it into Google's index. Nappy wonders if the curious know how to google najis.
Hmmm. The word "Najis" seems appropriate somehow, almost like a merger between Nazis and Jihadis.