Virtue signalers demand that Muslim footballer signal "vice"

Idrissa Gana Gueye is a Senegalese soccer player. He’s also a devout Muslim.

Gana (as he is known) starred in Everton’s midfield back when we were fairly good. (Everton is the English Premier League team I support.) In 2019, we sold him to Paris Saint-Germain, one of the best half dozen clubs in Europe.

During the next three seasons, Gana played pretty regularly for PSG, including in some of its biggest European matches. He also anchored the midfield for Senegal when it won the African Cup of Nations last year.

Now, the soon-to-be 33 year-old has returned to Everton. PSG might no longer need him, but we certainly do.

Unfortunately, and ridiculously, Gana’s return to Merseyside has generated controversy. While at PSG, Gana did not play in two matches in which the team’s jersey featured the rainbow flag to support the LGBT movement.

In the first match, Gana was said to be suffering from gastroenteritis. PSG declared him unavailable for the second match due to personal reasons. The player declined to state what the personal reasons were.

Gana’s non-participation in these two matches produced a strong backlash — not just from LGBT organizations and not just from the left. Ile-de-France regional president Valérie Pécresse, a center-right leader, joined in, demanding that Gana be sanctioned. (She should know better, but then she gained only 4.8 percent of the vote in the last presidential election, the worst showing in the history of her party and its illustrious predecessors.)

Gana’s move to Everton has renewed the controversy. Rainbow Toffees, Everton’s LGBT+ fan group, issued this statement:

If a football club expects its players to reflect the welcoming and inclusive nature they wish to promote, then someone’s religious beliefs should not be any sort of excuse to oppose inclusivity.

No one is asking anyone to change their religious views, but they should have no connection to whether a football club is inclusive and welcoming to the LGBT+ community.

Can you make sense of this language? I can’t.

If Gana is entitled to maintain his religious views and these views “oppose inclusivity,” then the views justify the mild opposition to “inclusivity” that Gana apparently expressed by not participating in a football match or two.

As I see it, religious views are a more than sufficient justification for Gana’s non-participation. I say “more than sufficient” because I think opposition to homosexuality, etc. even for non-religious reasons would justify opting out of wearing the rainbow flag.

But in Gana’s case, it’s likely that religious belief was not the only reason why he did not wear the flag. Souleymane Diouf (a pseudonym) is the leader of the LGBTQ rights group Collectif Free du Sénégal. He stated:

The LGBTI community in France lives in relative security and has no idea of the degree of homophobia that is currently rampant in Senegal. In my opinion, the “affair of the PSG rainbow shirts”, with the refusal of the Senegalese national, Idrissa Gana Gueye, to wear them, illustrates not the homophobia of the professional footballer dictated by Mohammedan religious convictions, but rather a choice of caution, given the virulence of homophobic pressure groups in Senegal and the notoriety acquired by the player, following the recent victory of the national team, during the African Cup of Nations, last February.

He added:

Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that all of Senegal knows where his family lives must have weighed in the balance. In Europe, Idrissa Gana Gueye may not be very courageous, but in Senegal, wearing a jersey with a rainbow design would have greatly harmed and compromised his chances of being selected for the next World Cup to be held at the end of the year in Qatar — another country that is not very gay-friendly.

In his place, I would probably have done the same thing and I refuse to blame him.

To many European non-Muslims, wearing the rainbow flag is essentially risk free — an easy signal of virtue. But to a great many in Senegal, where homosexuality is illegal, wearing it would be a high-risk signal of “vice.” (I use quotation marks to make it clear that this is not my view of gays, lesbians, etc.)

A celebrity footballer from a Muslim country should not be condemned for quietly declining to take that risk. Neither should be be condemned for not showing support for a movement that runs directly contrary to his religious beliefs.

Yet Gana stands condemned.

That’s the Western world today: Cheap virtue signaling, lack of respect for religion, and a quest to punish those who won’t go along with the dictates of wokeism.