Indian Muslim cleric says women watching soccer un-Islamic, issues fatwa

Lucknow: A senior Muslim cleric issued a religious decree saying that Muslim women should not watch men playing soccer.

Mufti Athar Kasmi, senior cleric at Darul Uloom, said that watching men "playing with bare knees" violated the tenets of Islam.

Kasmi's decree comes even as the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia allowed women to watch matches in soccer stadiums earlier this month.

The Islamic seminary's rigid interpretation of Islam is the ideological foundation for many hard-line religious groups including the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

The majority of Indian Muslims are Sunni but the country's secular constitution ensures that decrees such as Kasmi's have no legal force.