On November 14, the Football Scholars Forum convened in East Lansing and online to discuss “Soccer in the Middle East,” a special issue of Soccer and Society, edited by Alon Raab and Issam Khalidi. Topics covered included the sport as a source of unity and hope and as a site of political and ideological conflict; the 2022 World Cup in Qatar; soccerpolitics in Turkey; sport and Islamism; Palestinian and Iraqi Kurdish women’s teams; and football films and poetry.
Click here for a Storify Twitter timeline; click here to download the mp3 audio recording of the session.