Interesting reading regarding the matter:
Don't get cross: Inter's kit had nothing to do with faith relations
Baris Kaska's ridiculous complaint about Internazionale's red and white strip is guff at best, and, at worst, fuels the fires of bigotry
Benjie Goodhart
December 19, 2007 3:15 PM
While frequently hitting the heights of the sublime, football never loses its ability to stray into the realms of the ridiculous. Just last week in Turkey, Baris Kaska - a lawyer by profession -
lodged a complaint in a local court against Internazionale, who he claimed were "racist" and "offensive" towards Islam during their Champions League tie against Fenerbahçe in November ... all because they wore a kit with a red cross against a white background during the game.
I know! Disgusting! But let's allow Mr Kaska to put our righteous indignation into words: "It is offensive to Muslim sensibilities ... That cross only brings one thing to mind - the symbol of the Templar Knights. It made me think immediately of the bloody days of the past. While I was watching the game I felt profound grief in my soul." Kaska went on to say that the cross symbolised "Western racist superiority over Islam", and that Inter had "manifested in the most explicit manner the superiority of one religion over another".
Let's dissect this guff a little further (if it is indeed possible to dissect guff). "It is offensive to Muslim sensibilities." Which Muslims? Not Fenerbahçe's players and officials, who approved the strip the day before kick-off and are entirely blameless in this affair. Nor, surely, the majority of the religion's followers.
No, it offended a tiny band of oversensitive extremists. The same bunch who believe people should be beheaded for calling a teddy bear Muhammad. The same extremists who were so outraged by the Pope's (wrongheaded albeit misquoted) remarks about Islam being a religion that had once been spread by violence that they went out and killed a nun. In short, the same Muslims who misrepresent the majority of their religion's followers; who claim to speak for their brothers and sisters while instead condemning them to ridicule. Baroness Warsi
recently spoke out against the 'victim culture' adopted by certain elements in the Muslim community. Could she have hoped for a more apposite example?
"That cross only brings one thing to mind - they symbol of the Templar Knights." Maybe he's been reading The Da Vinci Code. A red cross on a white background makes me think of a few other things. The English flag? The Red Cross? M*A*S*H? Will he also sue Alan Alda?
"While I was watching the game I felt profound grief in my soul." I'm not surprised. Fenerbahçe were abject.
They were trounced 3-0 at the San Siro, and it could easily have been more.
Am I being cynical in attributing Kaska's gloom to the scoreline? I don't think so. Do you think he'd have complained if Fenerbahçe had won? Here's another little clue to his motivation: as well as suing Inter for damages, he's appealing to Uefa to annul the match. If the points were awarded to Fenerbahçe, or they won the replay, they would top the group, thus securing an easier tie in the knockout stages. It could be said that the crosses that really upset Kaska that night were the ones from the left that allowed Julio Cruz and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to score.
Kaska's actions cannot end well for him or his team. Uefa had approved
the Inter strip, which represents the cross of Sant'Ambrogio, the patron saint of Milan. The team brought out the strip to celebrate their centenary this season (it is a strip they have worn in the past) and to display their Milanese credentials in an effort to look more 'local' than Milan.
When I contacted Uefa, a spokesman confirmed: "Both clubs have to agree on each team's strip. If they hadn't agreed, the match would never have taken place." He also admitted that Uefa had received a letter of complaint from Kaska's office, and indicated it would be taken about as seriously as a clown riding a wobbly tricycle. "Uefa will reply to the letter, but as far as the match and the result are concerned, there is no problem. The strips were approved."
In which case, no harm done? Well, not quite. The Turkish newspaper Radikal saw fit to jump on this creakiest of bandwagons (as it rolled crazily and rapidly downhill from the moral high ground) and demanded: "How could Uefa allow this?"
A newspaper agreeing with such arrant nonsense merely appears to legitimise it, and serves to further polarise extreme views and a seething sense of misplaced injustice. Furthermore, Kaska's assertion that the shirt is intended as a symbol of Christian superiority, to belittle Islam, sadly looks like becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you type Baris Kaska into a search engine, you will quickly stumble across a litany of unpleasant, far-right websites where the story is used as another stick with which to beat Islam. And there, time and again, you will find contributors to the 'discussion' asking where they can get their hands on the shirt, to display their God-fearing, homespun Christianity. And so the shirt becomes a symbol of mockery and contempt after all.
So little by little, by tiny increments, the lack of understanding shown by individuals from each culture drives the wedge a little deeper, the parties a little further apart. Which is a problem far bigger than football. And to think, people mistrust lawyers.