“Muslims are leaving football, they think 'what is the point?'”: a qualitative study on Islamophobia in grassroots football in England and Wales

Awan, I and Zempi, I ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1719-8573, 2025. “Muslims are leaving football, they think 'what is the point?'”: a qualitative study on Islamophobia in grassroots football in England and Wales. Journal of Sport and Social Issues. ISSN 0193-7235

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Abstract

This paper explores Muslim players’ experiences of Islamophobia at grassroots football. It employs Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework to interpret Islamophobia as a form of anti-Muslim racism in football. The paper considers the complexities of intersectionality in terms of race, religion, gender, and the ‘space’ where Islamophobia is manifested, both online and offline. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 40 British Muslim footballers, findings show that Islamophobia in football is intersectional, yet it is normalised and understood as ‘part of the game’. Participants’ race coupled with religion was also a key trigger for the hate that they received both online and offline. It will be concluded that grassroots football could be understood as a ‘racial project’ whereby Muslims are stigmatised, oppressed and excluded. To this end, grassroots football becomes a mirror of Islamophobia in wider society.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Sport and Social Issues
Creators:	Awan, I. and Zempi, I.
Publisher:	Sage
Date:	30 April 2025
ISSN:	0193-7235
Identifiers:	Number Type 2411071 Other 10.1177/01937235251333438 DOI
Rights:	© the author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	24 Mar 2025 10:07
Last Modified:	30 Apr 2025 15:37
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53283

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