When the Premier League started in 1992, it included just one footballer known to be Muslim, Tottenham's Spanish midfielder Nayim. England's top division now features 40 Muslim players and they are having a significant effect on the culture of the game.
On 5 February, 2012, Newcastle United played Aston Villa at St James' Park and one moment symbolised the impact Muslim players were having on the Premier League.
After 30 minutes, Demba Ba scored for the home side. He raced to the corner flag and was joined by Senegalese compatriot Papiss Cisse. The two devout Muslims then sank to their knees in prayer.
The growing influx of Muslim players has been fuelled by the internationalisation of football.
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Watch The Muslim Premier League, presented by Colin Murray, on BBC 1 at 12:20 BST on Sunday, 7 July, or catch it again at 23:35 BST on Monday 8 July.
Scouts have spread their nets wider in the search for new talent and the Premier League has become a much more diverse place.
Young men with origins in remote villages of west Africa or tough estates in Paris have become global stars.
They may have found wealth and fame playing for English clubs, but many still hold on to something that is rooted in their cultural identity, something that guides them and comforts them when the going gets tough - their Islamic faith.
When a player of the calibre of Ba, who left Newcastle last year to join Chelsea, says he is serious about his religion, some might argue clubs cannot afford not to listen.
And there is a genuine willingness, on the part of managers and clubs, to understand and accommodate the religious needs of their players.
Muslim footballers are provided with halal food, have the option to shower separately from the rest of the team and are given time and space for prayer.
Until recently, all Premier League players named man of the match were awarded a bottle of champagne.
Yet for Muslims, alcohol is forbidden. So when Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure politely refused to accept his award on religious grounds during a television interview, the competition organisers were forced to sit up and take notice.
Champagne was phased out and now all players receive a small trophy instead.
When Liverpool won the League Cup final in 2012, players had the sensitivity to move the clothes of their team doctor, a devout Muslim, out of the changing rooms so that alcohol wasn't sprayed over them.
Yet there are challenges to managing Muslim players and Ramadan is a particular pressure point.
How can players who aren't eating or drinking for up to 18 hours of the day perform at the highest level over 90 minutes of a game?
Muslim Players In Epl History
Some players insist on fasting every day. Others may fast during training but not a match day. Clubs tend to muddle through with some kind of compromise, but it can't be an easy period for players or managers.
Arsenal midfielder Abou Diaby, 27, says: 'Arsenal would prefer me to not fast, but they understand this is a special moment for me and they try to accommodate things to make me better.'
![Muslim Players In Epl Muslim Players In Epl](/uploads/1/2/3/9/123953658/577648016.jpg)
Ba, 28, admits he has had some issues with managers about Ramadan, but says he has been steadfast.
'Every time I had a manager that was not happy with it, I've said: 'Listen, I'll do it. If my performance is still good, I'll keep playing; if it's bad you drop me on the bench, that's it.'
Former Stoke striker Mamady Sidibe, 33, insists: 'You have some players who are fasting on a match day and doing very well, it's no problem. I make sure that on match day I'm not fasting and not to give excuses to people.'
Ramadan this year ends on 7 August, 10 days before the start of the Premier League season.
Sponsorship deals have also been a source of tension. Teams who advertise gambling and pay day loan companies on their shirts put their Muslim players in a difficult position, as it means they are being used to promote activities which contradict Islamic teaching.
Last month Cisse said he planned to talk to Newcastle and their new sponsors, Wonga, because he was worried his Muslim beliefs would be compromised if he were seen to promote the company.
Crewe striker Nathan Ellington, 32, who has also played for Wigan and West Brom, takes the view that he cannot affect which sponsor his club chooses.
He said: 'I think that's usually out of the hands of the Muslim. Although he's not allowed to gamble, that's something you cannot affect really.'
Wigan keeper Ali Al-Habsi, 31, agrees: 'We are players and these are things that are coming from the football club. We can't do anything about it, we just do our job.'
Fans are also getting an education in Muslim practices.
When manager Alan Pardew suggested Ba's slow start to the 2011-12 season was due to his fasting, fans picked up on it and marked every subsequent goal with a song celebrating how many goals he had scored since Ramadan, to the tune of Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough.
Children playing football in the parks of Newcastle have even been spotted falling to their knees as if in prayer themselves after scoring a goal.
They may not completely understand what it means, but it's a sign that Muslim practices are becoming a more familiar part of popular British culture.
Watch The Muslim Premier League on BBC1 on Sunday, 7 July at 12:20 BST or catch it again on Monday 8 July at 23:35 BST.
Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané visit a local Liverpoolmosque each week after training for Jumu’ah, the Friday prayer. It is an obligatory prayer for Muslim men, who are encouraged to wear their smartest clothes for the occasion.
The football-supporting Muslims especially the children are blown away by their presence. The players mingle. They pose for pictures.
In a recent photograph, Mané, who grew up in the small village of Bambali, south Senegal, within a deeply-religious family, is wearing a wonderful emerald green kaftan, a long top, with two youngsters.
A presence in the game
People have posted on social media that they want to convert to Islam because of these players. It’s not only about the goals they are scoring – particularly Salah, the Premier League’s outright top scorer on 28 goals – but because they are spreading the message of what the Muslim faith is about: being open, welcoming, among the people; being humble and not thinking about oneself – which for a star footballer generally bucks the trend.
There are numerous Anfield terrace songs about “Egyptian King” Salah, including: “If he’s good enough for you/He’s good enough for me/If he scores another few/ Then I’ll be Muslim too,” which ends: “He’s sitting in the mosque/ That’s where I want to be.”
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Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba is known to regularly donate to charity. At the club’s player of the season awards last year, the midfielder donated a substantial sum to pay for 11-year-old United supporter Samuel, who has cerebral palsy, to be a mascot. On Pogba’s 25th birthday last week, he implored his 6.9million followers on Facebook to donate to Save the Children. Giving to charity is a staple of Islam.
Riyad Mahrez, of Leicester City, and Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante are also well-known, among certain communities, for their charitable donations.
Many of the Premier League’s greatest players nowadays are practising Muslims.
Fan perspectives
Yet while Muslim players are adored and idolised by supporters today, the same respect is not always reserved for fellow supporters who share the same beliefs. Attitudes have changed over the years, but not remained on a steady trajectory towards acceptance; rather reactions in the terraces and around stadiums on matchdays have reflected the geopolitical environment of the time. Rimla Akhtar, 35, was the first Muslim woman to sit on the Football Association Council. She has always been involved in football: from finding it a safe space as a child in a racially-troubling time, to becoming a leading figure in developing role models and ambassadors to encourage Muslim women to engage with the game, to working for the FA. Faith and football, the subject of i‘s series this week, has been at the forefront of her work.
Akhtar is a Liverpool supporter. She has worn the hijab, the veil worn by some Muslim women in public, since 1992, but when she started going to matches she would take it off and wear a Liverpool scarf around her neck and baseball cap on her head.
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“I didn’t think I’d be accepted as hijab-wearing woman of colour in that place,” Akhtar (right) tells i. “Part of that was perception, part of it was the actualities of what was going on around the time: 9/11 happened, there was a lot of anger and hatred building towards the Muslim community. There was a real risk for someone like me to be visibly Muslim at a game.” Her family did not want her attending football matches alone, but at the start of the millennium she would go with her two older bothers. They are big guys; big enough to dissuade any would-be assailant.
The Best Muslim Football Players In The World
By the mid-2000s Akhtar, former captain of the British Muslim Women’s football team, grew tired of hiding her identity and started wearing the hijab to games. It was difficult for her brothers, she says, because they wanted to protect her and were concerned. Largely, bar a few stares here and there, she was not subjected to any serious feelings of animosity from her own or other fans. But, as they did around 9/11, things have worsened again for Muslim supporters.
“Part of me wonders, if my brothers weren’t around would I have had to deal with more? I do feel I would have. In more recent times, the increasing Islamophobia and Muslim hatred in society is filtering into football. I’ve not had physical attacks, but there have been verbal attacks about my presence at a game. If I get a ticket and someone doesn’t, they will take it out on me.
“I won’t repeat the words, but they are questioning how I can get into a game and they can’t. I feel I’m almost lucky I’ve not had to deal with a physically intimidating situation.”
Xenophobic behaviour
She knows of Liverpool supporters who had to deal with anti-Muslim intimidation from West Ham fans at the old Boleyn Ground when they were praying under some stairs at half-time in a game. At Anfield, a father and son were praying in the stadium and somebody took a picture of them and posted it on Twitter, calling it a disgrace. Others on the site branded the poster a disgrace in return.
Akhtar believes around the time of Mido joining Middlesbrough, post 9/11, when bomber chants and others relating to Islamophobic abuse began, people started to realise there were prominent Muslim players in the Premier League and Football League. “Newcastle had a number there under Alan Pardew,” she says. “And Sam Allardyce at Bolton. This movement of players coming into the top leagues has had a positive impact. A lot of them had to deal with abuse from fans, though. Given the background, geopolitical issues, it was particularly difficult for a Muslim player to be accepted unless they were the star player.”
Now, she explains, there is a Muslim chaplain working with the Premier League, starting to travel across the country to clubs, providing information on Ramadan, fasting and how that might impact players from the first-team to the academy.
Welcoming and including Muslim players
She is concerned, still, that while clubs go out of their way to accommodate the biggest players, younger Muslims at academies remain wary that causing any kind of inconvenience because of their religion could damage their chances of earning a professional contract.
“Clubs are taking a look at how to accommodate needs of Muslim players,” she says. “If you’re an Özil, an Emre Can, a Salah, you will have support of the club in every way, shape or form, but when a Muslim player is born or brought up in Britain, at an academy they might struggle to get what they need, they will worry that if they identify as Muslim and make special requests it might affect there chance of a professional contract. A lot of adjustments have been made, but they’ve been made at first-team level.
“I use the multi-faith room at Anfield; it’s brilliant, easily accessible. People are in and out all the time. How do we take it to next level? From grass roots to the academy into the first team, how do we make sure the inclusion happens for everyone?” Many significant changes have been made already, even if more are needed. The face of English football has changed unimaginably through the impact of Islam since the league’s inception in 1992, when Tottenham’s Nayim was its only practising Muslim.
The Professional Footballers’ Association give lectures to players at all 92 clubs about crossing the line between “dressingroom banter” and unacceptable behaviour towards team-mates and opponents of different cultures and religions.
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At Arsenal’s London Colney base and Liverpool’s Melwood training ground, they serve only halal chicken in the canteen. At Liverpool they have a special chef to cater for the Muslim players. Prayer rooms have opened up at the Emirates Stadium and Newcastle’s St James’ Park.
Changing attitudes
The game has evolved over the years as some of the world’s best players have arrived at clubs, their faith needing accommodating.
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Allardyce, now Everton manager, and Pardew, now at West Bromwich Albion, were two managers who led the way in recruiting Muslim players: attracted by their attitudes and discipline, the way they conducted themselves, avoided vices such as alcohol and gambling and generally kept out of trouble. At Bolton, Allardyce could sometimes be found accompanying goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi to the mosque.
When Liverpool won the 2012 Carling Cup final, before spraying champagne around their Wembley dressing room, they made sure head of medicine, Dr Zafar Iqbal, who openly shared his religion with the players, was not present.
The Premier League had to stop giving champagne as a man-of-the-match award because Manchester City’s Yaya Touré kept winning it. They changed it to a trophy instead.
The Muslim faith has had a profound effect on English football, and will continue to do so.
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