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Analysis: Goodwill Games or Bread and Circus?
By Ali Asadullah 06/09/2001
By the time this article goes to print, the Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Australia will be drawing to a close. Like the Olympics, the Goodwill games provide athletes with an opportunity to participate as nations on an international scale in a wide range of sports. Complete with opening ceremonies, crowning of champions and every other pomp and circumstance associated with such events, the Goodwill Games has drawn significant attention from viewers around the world.
Thrilled and entertained for the past two weeks, most viewers have probably soaked up coverage of their favorite sports events without giving much thought to what the Goodwill Games and other such events represent.
To the layperson, these occasions are often just simple diversions from the mundane grind of everyday life. After a long hard day on the job, Joe Citizen can sit down and live vicariously through the elite athletes dashing across his television screen. For hours on end, he can watch feats of athleticism that often boggle the mind, leaving viewers asking, "How'd he do that?"
There is, of course, nothing wrong with a little entertainment. Various sports can be quite fun to watch and they can even help motivate the non-professional athlete to participate in activities on a local level that can be very beneficial to overall health and can help build community. After all, the Prophet Muhammad (saaws) encouraged Muslims to be proficient in swimming, archery and horseback riding, and himself even participated in a wrestling match on one occasion.
However in today's world, what once was simply a diversion has become a popular obsession. It used to be that the Olympic Games satisfied public interest in sport. But, that periodic event soon gave way to the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games, the Arab Games, the African Games, the Pan American Games, the Goodwill Games, the World Series, March Madness, the World Cup and any other host of championships focused on singular sports.
Suddenly the diversion looks more like a full time job. In fact, it can be such a full-time job that cable and satellite television providers market sports as such. DirecTV, AT&T, Orbit, Star and other content providers sell viewing packages that center solely on sports. And the sports fan - "fan" being an abbreviation for "fanatic"
(def: a person possessed by an excessive zeal for and uncritical attachment to a cause or position) - can sit fixated, literally all day, on a television screen, watching competitions that have little consequence upon the real endeavors that make societies move forward.
But, looking past the issue of the inordinate amount of time one can devote towards being a sports spectator, there is arguably the greater issue of the messages being promulgated by the world of elite and professional sport.
The messages are often hidden in language that fills people's hearts with feelings of altruism and magnanimity. The Olympic motto speaks not of winning, but of competing. The Goodwill Games were created to help thaw the brisk chill that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But just under the surface, are things that aren't quite so good-hearted.
The Olympics is an industry all unto itself, complete with highly paid executives and corporate scandals. The Goodwill Games is corporate endeavor of AOL Time Warner, and is even referred to as an "AOL Time Warner Company" on the Games' website. But, let's dig deeper.
One of the marketing tag lines for the 2001 Goodwill Games reads, "The gods of sport in our own backyard." Sure, this statement is not meant to be taken literally for the
Shirk (polytheism) and Kufr (disbelief) it suggests. However, when one considers that the each Olympic Games starts with a reenactment of the lighting of an eternal flame by Greek gods in Athens, one can only begin to wonder about the more subtle suggestion being made by such events.
In our modern world, people scoff at the idea of an assault on religion and piety; and perhaps focusing on the pagan references that can be found with relation to the aforementioned events is blowing things out of proportion. However, what is not simply exaggeration is the fact that modern athletic endeavor has a strong tendency to emphasize the self. Praise, awards and compensation are heaped on individuals. The human being and the human form are exalted and sports figures become objects of inordinate adulation and borderline worship. Mention of God, Allah (swt), is all but erased from these competitions, with reverence for the state, nation, culture and individual taking precedence.
It makes one wonder whether the days of Roman "bread and circus" appeasement of the masses are once again being foisted upon the society at large, all cleverly disguised in the robes of egalitarian participation, cultural exchange and harmless entertainment.
We may not be as brutal as the Romans were with their games, but if we are not careful we can become just as irreverent in our disregard for Allah (swt) and the very important tasks he asks each of us to complete each day of our very short lives.
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