... all I can do is shake my head ...

Did you hear about the anti-soccer fatwa publicised in a Saudi daily in August 2005?

(A fatwa is explained by Wikipedia as ... a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued ... at the request of an individual or a judge to settle a question where "fiqh", Islamic jurisprudence, is unclear ... Because Islam has no centralized priestly hierarchy, there is no uniform method to determine who can issue a valid fatwa and who cannot, and upon whom such fatāwa are binding....)

To get the full story, please refer to this IHT article by Goeff D. Porter, who also translated it from its original Arabic. Here's a selection to blow your mind:

• International terminology that heretics and polytheists use, like "foul," "penalty," "corner," "goal," "out" and others, should be abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished, reprimanded and ejected from the game. He should be publicly told, "You have imitated the heretics and polytheists and this is forbidden."
  
  
• Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.
  
  
• Do not set the time of play at 45 minutes, which is the official time of the Jews, Christians and all the heretical and atheist countries. This is the time used by teams that have strayed from the righteous path.
  
  
• Do not play in two halves. Rather play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the polytheists, the corrupted and the disobedient.
  
  
• If neither of you beats the other, or "wins" as it is called, and neither puts the leather between the posts, do not add extra time or penalties until someone wins. No, instead leave the field, because winning with overtime and penalty kicks is the pinnacle of imitating heretics.
  
  
• You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish and reprimand him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practicing?

(There's more .. please check out the link!)

My first reaction to this was OMG I really hope this is a joke!

Guess what? It's for real! *cringe!* Here's what's written about it by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

... wonder how these fatwa-issuers behaved during the cartoon controversy??