Taking the Intifada to the Football Field

But this gathering of Muslim American athletes on the gridiron -- they say a first for Southern California -- is being flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct by religious leaders dismayed by some of the team's names.

Monikers for the flag-football teams include Mujahideen, Intifada and Soldiers of Allah and are accompanied on the league's Web site, http://muslimfootball.com, by logos of masked men, some with daggers or swords.

An organizer of the Jan. 4 event, geared for American Muslims in their teens and 20s, said the names are a sign of football bravado and a show of support for Muslims in the Middle East.

"A lot of the kids on our team are from Palestinian origin," said Tarek Shawky, Intifada's 29-year-old captain and quarterback. "We are in solidarity with people in the uprising. It's about human rights and basic freedoms."

"I think they should be more sensitive and show respect to other people's sensitivities," said Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of Orange County and a national Muslim leader. "The words themselves do not have bad meanings, but people associate them with what's going on in the world around them."

But others say Palestinian fighters in the Intifada are terrorists and shouldn't be glorified. Another provocative name, Mujahideen, means "holy warrior," and is associated with a variety of Islamic resistance movements, including two on the U.S. government's list of terrorist groups.

"What exactly are they honoring here?" asked Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "The continued targeting of innocent women and children by homicide bombers deserves to be condemned across the board. It's deeply, deeply disturbing."

In the post-Sept. 11 era, the idea that American-born Muslims in suburbia would give their football teams militant names hurts the image of Islam in the United States, interfaith leaders say. And it doesn't matter whether the reasons for the choices are youthful zeal, football machismo, family connections to the Middle East or religious convictions.

"I think they spoil [a good thing] by politicizing it," said retired Rabbi Bernie King, who lives in Irvine.

"Something like this undermines [those working with Muslims] and tends to support those in the community who have suspicions about the real intent of Islam."