From Where I Sit                    Judith Lynch (Melbourne)             Judith's previous articles              Judith's website    


August 18, 2012    
                 LONE   VOICES

The 2012 Olympics are over and across the world the medal winners are being feted in bursts of national fervour. But not all Olympic champions stand on the podium. Some finish last. Like Tahmina Kohistani. Her Olympic run in the women’s 100 metres was eight years in the making and lasted a fraction over fourteen seconds. She came last.

You may have seen Tahmina’s picture on the TV coverage, or read about her in the morning paper - the lone woman in the small Olympic team from Afghanistan, the woman who ran her race in a hijab and modest neck to ankle running gear . She’s 23, a university student and one gutsy young woman. It wasn’t injury or lack of funding that made the eight year journey to London so difficult but the ever present Taliban influence in a country where gender decides what is appropriate. Education and sport are definitely off the radar if you are a woman. 

Tahmina loved to run. Quite early in her life she decided that she wanted to run in the Olympics. Day in and day out she trained, out in the open, never really getting used to the hissing, jeers and insults from the watching men, sometimes more than a hundred of them. Even when she did get to London and ran her one race, she was mostly  ignored by the media.

In the eyes of the sporting world Tahmina is a loser. In my eyes and those of Afghan women she is a role model whose personal dream of running in London has broadened into the possibility of opening a sports academy in Kabul, somewhere for young Afghan women to take up sport in a supportive environment.

In an interview aired on Radio Australia she said, ''I'm coming here to do something for the women of Afghanistan who cannot get out from their houses. They have family problems; they have society exclusion problems. Because of that they can't do these things that they hoped. But I'm really happy to do something for those women. I know that whenever  I'm going to the opening ceremony, whenever I have compete on that day, there are a lot of Afghan girls and women that they are watching me, and they hope that one day they shall be in the place of me. And I am going to open a new way for the women of Afghanistan.''

For me Tahmina’s story is both moving and challenging. Moving, because  the courage shown by a very young woman facing up to what seems to be unbeatable odds touches into my own wimpyness in the face of opposition  and challenging  because I see her as something like a prophet in a hijab, and that’s a bit outside my Christian comfort zone. Prophets show us a different way, they challenge our thoughtless perceptions and comfortable passivity.  

Prophets invite us to grasp our Spirit inspired beliefs and dreams and run with them. Just this week I read of a woman who posted  a message on the Target website complaining about the range of  clothing available for girls 7 to 14 that she said “that makes them look like tramps”. A lone voice saying something that others may have thought but didn’t question on a public domain. Australian Dick Smith may be seen as a somewhat eccentric figure but this week he published a magazine called A Magazine of Forbidden Ideas challenging practices in our society that take away the right of all people to what is a just and equitable lifestyle. Prophetic figures? Maybe.

The Boston Theologian Peter Phan describes Jesus as the “border-crosser par excellence”.  I am reminded of another headscarf wearing woman from an Eastern country, the Syro-Phoenician woman highlighted in Mark’s Gospel (7:24-39). An ordinary mum, she  challenged what she believed was an injustice being done to her daughter and Jesus’ crossed not only a geographic border but he moved into a deeper  understanding of his own ministry.    

 That’s the challenge prophetic figures like Tahmina, Dick Smith and that those two  unknown mothers throw us.

Judith Lynch 16/08/12

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