Adam Serwer on how repressive governments and extremist insurgent groups have attempted to tamp down soccer obsession without success:
Conservative blogger Ilya Somin recently criticized the sport for promoting “nationalist and ethnic violence,” but it’s actually because of those nationalistic feelings that violent religious extremists find the sport so threatening. International soccer interferes with the extremist vision of a fundamentalist society free of secular influences in a number of ways — most notably by cultivating a secular, national identity separate from the religious one. It showcases peaceful interaction not only between rival, even hostile nations, but between Muslims and non-Muslims, undermining the narrative of an inevitable clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. This isn’t to say that soccer is necessarily a liberalizing force — Benito Mussolini’s Italy did win the last World Cup before World War II. But the world’s love for soccer offers a particularly difficult challenge for the pan-Islamist extremist ideology of groups like al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.