Welcome to Sports Politika, a media venture founded by investigative journalist and researcher Karim Zidan that strives to help you understand how sports and politics shape the world around us. Our mission is to offer an independent platform for accessible journalism that raises awareness and empowers understanding.
If you share this vision, please consider supporting us by joining our community and becoming a paid subscriber. We are currently running a special offer whereby you can secure a subscription at a fixed, discounted price.
In the moment that Norwegian investigative journalist Andreas Selliaas snapped the photo capturing Abdullah Ibhais and I in a moment of joy, Abdullah had just finished telling me that I look like a communist.
“What do you mean I look like a communist?” I asked, taken by surprise.
“The ponytail, the clothes, the beard—you just have that look,” he replied in his soft-spoken voice.
The interaction, which had us laughing long enough for Andreas to take the photo, came at the tail end of a busy week in the picturesque Norwegian capital of Oslo. The three of us had spent the past few days taking in the city between sessions at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the annual flagship conference for the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.
As the organization’s Sports & Dictators fellow, I had been contracted to help launch and grow a unique program exploring the intersection of sports and authoritarianism from a human rights perspective. Abdullah—...
For nearly 170 years, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie have been a visible force in that region’s community. They took to the streets for anti-Vietnam and civil rights marches in the 60s and 70s. S...