Indian cleric says women watching football violates Islamic tenets

Mufti Athar Kasmi, head of a Muslim seminary, issues decree opposing female spectators attending matches

A senior cleric at an influential Islamic seminary in northern India has issued a religious decree saying that Muslim women should not watch men playing football.

Mufti Athar Kasmi said over the weekend that watching men “playing with bare knees” violated the tenets of Islam. Kasmi is cleric at Darul Uloom, a seminary in the northern town of Deoband.

Kasmi's decree comes after Saudi Arabia allowed women to watch matches in football stadiums for the first time earlier this month.

The Islamic seminary's rigid interpretation of Islam is the ideological foundation for many hard-line religious groups, including the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

The majority of Indian Muslims are Sunni but the country's secular constitution ensures that decrees such as Kasmi's have no legal force.

This article originally appeared in The Independent