TEHRAN (FNA)- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in a meeting with officials of the Second National Congress of Sports Martyrs termed the athletes who refuse to compete with the Israeli regime's sportsmen and sportswomen as true victors.
During the meeting, Iran's Supreme Leader stressed that the issue of sports is an issue that needs to be addressed as a central rather than a marginal matter.
He also raised some important points with regards to sports and martyred athletes.
Ayatollah Khamenei further emphasized the need to combine technical victory in the sporting field with the victory of values and ethics.
"Sometimes a person might become deprived of a medal; our athlete will refuse to compete with his opponent who has been sent by the usurping regime of Israel," the Supreme Leader said, adding that he is deprived of getting the medal, but yet he is victorious.
"If anyone violates this principle, it would mean that he’s violating his moral victory. If you compete with that opponent, if you face them, it would mean that you’ve officially chosen to recognize the usurping regime - the regime that murders children," Ayatollah Khamenei added.
Commenting on the double-standard approach of the world’s Arrogant Powers towards sports, which has been manifested in “opposing the boycott of the Zionist regime by Muslim athletes” and “resorting to the sports boycott of Russia”, the Supreme Leader said that arrogant leaders and their followers and in fact, the servants of the world’s superpowers raise their voices to say, "Hey, don’t politicize sports".
He recalled that you saw what they did with sports after the war in Ukraine! They banned some countries from participating in sporting events for political reasons; That is, they easily cross their own red lines when their interests demand it, but then when our athlete refuses to compete with the Zionist side, they start finding faults with it.
In another part of his speech, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution addressed the issue of the Western world’s efforts to expport their culture into the Islamic Republic of Iran through new, advanced sports, and said, "Our duty is to bring the innovative sports that the other side has created – such as football, volleyball, and the other team sports that exist – let’s learn to advance in these and become professionals without accepting their culture. We shouldn’t let this turn into a bridge for western culture. We need to let our own culture govern it."
Iranian athletes abstain from playing against the athletes of the Israeli regime because they do not recognize the regime.
Athletes from other Muslim countries in numerous instances have taken the same measure.
In a similar move in early september, as the 2022 Karate 1-Premier League was underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, a Kuwaiti karateka withdrew from facing a Zionist opponent.
Earlier this year, a Kuwaiti tennis player had quitted a game against a Zionist rival in the semifinals of an international tournament in Dubai, UAE.
Social media users praised the acts of the Kuwaiti athletes which was a gesture of solidarity with the cause of Palestine and rejected the normalization of relations with the Zionist regime by some Arab countries.
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