Heart beating faster, taking in a shallow shaking breath as you’re running from one side of the pitch to the other. Voices calling to each other ‘Man on’. Your mind just occupied with that next shot.
The ball is coming nearer, a pass across and it’s yours. You prepare to accept it, striding towards it. The football hits the side of your foot, a perfect pass. Now needing to convert it into a goal standing now just a couple steps away from the goal outside the box.
You’re going to make it count, the scenarios have all played out in your head. There’s no way this isn’t going to be a goal. Leg raised back into the air. Suddenly you hear a slushing behind you, grass parting, dirt flying into the air.
The attacker missed the ball, but his foot carried on its journey colliding with your other foot. You fall over clutching your leg, referee didn’t look. Game’s still on.
You however you’re lying there wondering where your chance went, cursing up a storm about your injury, that doesn’t hurt anymore. The unfairness of it all.
The steam, your anger must be vented. You’re not about to start a fight, we’re among brothers after all. So you settle for swearing.
10 minutes after the game you’re still talking, discussing what happened, how the referee was so useless.
You’ve calmed down now, reflecting on the game, your anger, your swearing.
…I need to work on my temper when playing football…
—
Just came back from playing in a football tournament organised by the Isoc for Charity Week. We had 20 teams in total, it cost £42 per team to take part.
Well we lost all of our games. The competition was very good, but we also never played together as a team before.
It generally served me as a reminder, a reminder to keep calm in tough situations, in heated situations, in competitive situations. To work on myself and my temper.
When playing football it’s easy to let something slip, to let the frustration, your anger manifest itself in that way.
Swearing is normal in our society, so normal that it is a strategy, to raise for charity through it. For every profanity used you put something in a swear box. There even is an online version for twitter users at charityswearbox.
Swearing is not something that is condoned in Islam. Islam lays a lot of importance on character building so the Prophet saw. tells us:
“It is not the character of a believer to indulge in slandering, cursing, or immoral talk.” (Tirmidhi)
As Muslims we have to realise that whatever we do, whatever we say is going to be written by the scribes that Allah swt. has appointed to us. I’ll let Shaykh Kamal El-Mekki expand on that.
May Allah swt. the All-Knowing and All-Hearing forgive us for our lapses. May He swt. help us in guarding our tongues.
Amin.
Wa Salam,
Abdur-Rahman
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