NEW DELHI , 10 September 2005 — Indian Muslims were sharply divided over tennis star Sania Mirza’s mode of dressing yesterday, with some criticizing the player for wearing short skirts on court and accusing the teenager of being a “corrupting influence on young women.”
But Zafarul-Islam Khan, editor of The Milli Gazette, a bi-monthly publication with a focus on Islamic issues, said no fatwa had been issued.
“It is just for sensation,” he said. “There is no fatwa.” According to Khan, a fatwa is a response given in writing to a specific question, and can only be given by a qualified scholar, or “mufti.”
“But every time a bearded person says something it is called a fatwa,” he said, adding that Mirza’s attire was not an issue among most Indian Muslims. “The community is proud that a Muslim girl has done this,” he said.
Sania mania gripped India when the teenager reached the third round of the Australian Open in January, won the WTA Hyderabad Open in February and beat reigning US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in Dubai in March. Mirza will storm into the top 35 when the new WTA rankings are announced next week, after starting the year at 206.
Sania, when asked about the furor her dress had created, said she did not want to comment.
Earlier, Siddikulla Chowdhury, secretary of the Jamiat-Ulama-Hind Islamic movement in Kolkata, had said: “Sania Mirza is a Muslim and she stands half-naked on the tennis court while playing, which is against Islam. She is trying to ape some Western tennis players who dress in a similar way.”
“The dress she wears on the tennis court not only doesn’t cover large parts of her body but leaves nothing to the imagination of voyeurs,” a cleric Maulana Hasheeb-ul-Hasan Siddiqui told the Hindustan Times daily.
“She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence on these women,” said Siddiqui, general secretary of a group called the Sunni Ulema Board which is influential in Mirza’s home town of Hyderabad.
An India watcher said these obscurantists are just publicity seekers while having his own reservations on her dressing style. He said: “That’s a personal matter.”
