Skip to footer
Joy
The Monitor's View

Sports as sprouts amid strife

For residents of Gaza and women in Afghanistan, a revival of athletics lays the seeds for joy as a people.

|
AP
Afghan cricket players congratulate their top scorer during a match in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 30.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

The joy of sports is universal enough to transcend many human woes. For two of the world’s most woebegone places, Afghanistan and Gaza, glimmers of a return to athletic competition show why sports do indeed retain that eternal power of joy – and possible rejuvenation.

On Thursday, 21 Afghan women in exile from Taliban rule played an exhibition cricket match in Australia against a Melbourne team. Wearing blue jerseys displaying a tulip (Afghanistan’s national flower), they were the first Afghan women cricketers to compete in the international field.

Given that cricket is the most popular sport in Afghanistan, the game alone was an achievement. Yet as The Afghan Times news outlet in Pakistan pointed out, “This match was more than just a game – it was a symbol of resilience, hope, and the unyielding spirit of Afghan female cricketers who have continued to pursue their passion despite immense challenges.”

The match also came with a soft-power message to the team’s home country, where organized women’s athletics are banned. As one team player, Tooba Khan Sarwari, told The Diplomat, “To the Afghan women in Afghanistan it will say that ‘We are representing you. We are with you and never give up.’”

The other case of sports as sprouts of joy comes as a tentative peace settles over Gaza after 15 months of a war sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel.

In early January, the Palestine Olympic Committee met to “reactivate the suspended sports activity” caused by the conflict, including the destruction of sport facilities and the killing of athletes.

One goal is to have a team ready for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Last year, eight Palestinians were able to participate in the Paris Games. Yet the main task is to revive sports as “an element of unity” and for “national identity,” perhaps laying the seeds for a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Football Association has begun to scout for young men to play professional soccer, the favorite sport in Gaza. The territory’s athletes, declares the sports news site, FootBoom, “remain steadfastly attached to their dreams of pursuing sports among the ruins, determined to reclaim the once vibrant fields where sportsmanship was celebrated.” Joy to that.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.

 
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Sports as sprouts amid strife
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2025/0131/Sports-as-sprouts-amid-strife
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe