When news came that young Muslim girls had been turned away from a tae kwon do competition in Quebec because they wore Islamic head scarves, one of the people upset was the former dean of engineering of the University of Ottawa.
Aside from being an electrical engineer, Tyseer Aboulnasr is a hijab-wearing black belt in tae kwon do, a mother of two who began practising martial arts in her 40s.
While she understands that officials at the Fédération de Tae kwondo du Québec are applying their rules to the letter, she feels that they are betraying the sport's spirit of inclusiveness.
"Honestly, when I heard about it, I thought, this is unbelievable," she said yesterday.
Dr. Aboulnasr's embrace of tae kwon do is a rebuke to the traditional image of hijab-wearing Muslim women as people from a cloistered, inward-looking community.
The Egyptian-born 52-year-old is one of the rare women, let alone Muslim women, to have been a dean in such a male-dominated academic field as engineering.
She had never heard of tae kwon do until 1995, when her eight-year-old daughter wanted to learn martial arts after watching The Next Karate Kid, starring Hilary Swank.
When Dr. Aboulnasr took her daughter to a tae kwon do school, she noticed that it was an ideal sport for devout Muslim women because it allowed them to be athletic while remaining modestly covered.
"I went into tae kwon do because I saw it as a sport that is very Islamic," she said.
What happened during Sunday's tournament in Longueuil, Que., underlines the complex reality of both the world of sports and the world of Canadian Muslims.
The tournament was held under the rules of the Seoul-based World Taekwondo Federation. WTF rules are unambiguous. Article 4.2 states that "wearing any item on the head other than the head protector shall not be permitted."
However, unlike other sports, tae kwon do does not have a single world body. The Vienna-based International Taekwon-do Federation, under which Dr. Aboulnasr has competed, has looser rules that allow "bandaging or strapping" as long as they don't give a competitor an advantage.
In more than a dozen years practising under ITF rules, no one ever questioned whether she should remove her hijab. "It never came up. It is soft. It poses no threats to anybody."
The girls who were banned from competing are between the ages of 10 and 14 and come from the Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal, an organization of mostly Lebanese Shia Muslims whose website promotes a religiously orthodox view of the world.
"Wearing the hijab . . . liberates women from the trap of Western fashion and maladies," one article on the website says.
One of the girls' coaches, Mahdi Sbeiti, said the tae kwon do program uses the Centre Communautaire's facilities but is not restricted to Muslims and does not feature any religious instruction.
"There's no religion, these are sports classes," he said, noting that the team's other coach is an old-stock francophone Quebecker.
Jean Faucher, president of the Fédération de Tae kwondo du Québec, has argued that the hijab isn't banned for religious reason but rather in the same way as other non-standard items, such as sweatbands.
But Dr. Aboulnasr said the hijab should be allowed precisely because it is not a mere sweatband but a religious garment, albeit not a dangerous object.
"There is a difference between people wearing things out of conviction and people wearing something for convenience. And if you cannot see the difference between the two, I would say, 'Go back, find out about the spirit of tae kwon do and apply that.' "
While tae kwon do is a contact sport, there is no grappling on the floor like judo or wrestling, Dr. Aboulnasr said, so it is unlikely a head scarf could throttle a competitor.
Also, blows to the head are forbidden, she noted. "Even when you kick, you're supposed to touch with the tip of the toe to score points."
Mr. Sbeiti said his group has been invited to a meeting in two weeks with the Quebec federation. Meanwhile, he said, they will ask the World Taekwondo Federation to clarify its rules.
Tu Thanh Ha