Team anthem controversy
August 4, 2009
"Blue and white, how I love you." So begins the Schalke club song, a typical sports team anthem praising the young and beautiful Schalke girls and promising allegiance to the team in blue and white. But in the third verse, the lyrics make a surprising reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
"Muhammad was a prophet who understood nothing about football," the song goes. "But of all the beautiful colors, he chose blue and white."
The Turkish media have recently picked up on the lines. Now some Muslims are calling the reference a mockery of Muhammad, and the team and its fans have become the target of anger and threats.
Looking for an explanation
The Central Council of Muslims in Germany is hoping to help resolve the issue.
"I don't see any malicious intent or direct blasphemy," said Aiman A. Mazyek, the Council's general secretary. However, "the words used might cause some people to go red in the face with anger."
"There won't be a call from us to ban the song," Mazyek said, "but rather an explanation of its background."
According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the team is taking the Muslim concerns seriously.
"First we must clarify whether this is fake outrage or a sincere conviction," Hans-Joachin Dohm, head of the team's honorary council, told the newspaper. He said the team was consulting with an Islam expert and was hoping to begin a dialogue with the Muslim community.
Muhammad also in other songs
The "Blue and White, How I Love You" song was written in 1924 when the Schalke players adopted the blue and white team colors, although it's not clear when the Muhammad reference made its way in.
But a similar line about the Prophet Muhammad being a good chooser of colors and having chosen the colors of a soccer team was common in fan songs in the 1920s, according to Barbara Boock, a folk song expert from the German Folk Song Archive in Freiburg.
The original use was a hunter's song and ode to the color green from 1897. Boock told Deutsche Welle that the song went "Muhammad is my patron, real beauty he already knew. He who chose from the many colors the green one as his holy one."
"This was used in all different versions," she said. "But this change made by Schalke – that Muhammad was a prophet who didn't know anything about football – that's a new invention. That's moving a little bit out of the tradition of the song."
hf/epd/SID
Editor: Susan Houlton