Young Muslims and Sport: Italy as case-study

Sport is generally considered as a tool to encourage the integration of young foreigners in diaspora land and of individuals from different ethnic communities. However, with regard to the Muslim population in non-Islamic societies, this concept poses critical issues, as emerges from various re-searches at the European level (Hargreaves 2007; Pfister 2008; Benn 2011). In fact, for young Muslims, teachings and norms related to the Islamic religion and cultural as-pects of their background can conflict with practicing sports. As regards the Italian context, the Muslim population, about 2.5 million of which one million with Italian citizenship, sees a signifi-cant number of young people, grown up or born in the Country, who are in a position to practice sports since starting from schools. The target of this paper is therefore to present some interesting indications concerning the atti-tudes and opinions of young Muslims towards sport came from a questionnaire and some focus groups, carried out between October and December 2020, to a sample of boys and girls of GMI, the oldest Islamic youth association in Italy. The frame that emerges sees on one hand, the majority of interviewees to consider sport an im-portant activity that can promote social inclusion processes, on the other hand a series of issues when they have to deal with the “sport environment”, that requests to comply with specific regula-tions, to wear uniforms, to train in spaces that are not separated between genders or to forbid in several cases of being able to wear the Islamic veil (hijab), etc.