Muslim women will soon be able to wear headscarves (Hijab) during international football games, thanks to a Dutch designer.
The designer, Cindy Van Den Bremen said that she had sent some of her sports headscarf designs to the National Jordan football team to use it and test it.
She also came in contact with Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, vice president of FIFA’s (International Federation of Football Association) executive council, who organized a conference last year to discuss about the FIFA Hijab ban.The Prince last Saturday presented the Capsters sports Hijab designs at a special International Association Football Board meeting to change the FIFA rules on Hijab.
Cindy said FIFA is now going to test the Hijab design and decide during their next meeting in July on a definite approval before it can be worn by the women football players.
The Dutch designer told Kuwait news agency KUNA the idea behind sports Hijab came to her after a Muslim girl in a school in the Netherlands was expelled from a gym class for wearing the headscarf.
The mother of the girl tried to sow the hijab together to prevent loose ends; the girl even demonstrated that her Hijab was safe by making a roll over in the courtroom.
The court decided in favor of the teacher and gave a possible solution for the girl to wear the turtleneck and a swimming cap instead.
This made Cindy realize the covering was not the problem itself but the way the girls cover their head, making her realize that as a designer she could possibly solve that issue. Cindy designed four sports Hijabs.
“Due to all the publicity and the orders that started coming in, it appeared to me that it was a universal problem, the sports Hijab. I never imagined I would start a company around it,” she told KUNA.
Cindy founded a company in 2008 called Capsters which is based in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven, close to the Belgian border.
“We designed a special headscarf for the visitors of the fastest roller coaster on earth. Women that wear the Sheyla in combination with their Abaya might lose their hijab during the ride or obstruct the view of the visitors behind them. For safety reasons we developed a Capsters Special to be worn over their Sheyla to keep it in place during the ride that reaches 240 km per hour,” she said.
She has also published a book called Hoofddoeken in Dutch (Hijabs) and organized a traveling exhibition with pictures and quotes from the book throughout the Netherlands. Together with local Muslim women she shared the different and personal stories behind covering. The Hijab in the Netherlands has raised a lot of discussion, and Cindy said she wanted to contribute to a better understanding. Cindy van den Bremen believes the choice to cover yourself should be yours and yours only. “Whether you want to cover your head because of religious convictions, due to problems of hair loss, or just because you want to keep warm or express your identity, it is all up to you,” she stressed.
Her sports headscarf has won a Good Design Award in Japan and a place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
