"We will stand by you no matter what your results are... Good luck and keep moving forward." This is how Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune congratulated and supported Algerian boxer Imane Khelif on his official Facebook account, following her victory over her Hungarian competitor in the Paris 2024 Olympics.
This support comes in the context of Iman Khelif facing a global online bullying campaign by some politicians, writers, and well-known Western figures after the defeat of Italian boxer Angela Carini, raising questions about the reason behind this bullying! Especially since it is not based on scientific or legal grounds, as the issue is clear to the International Olympic Committee, according to its spokesperson Mark Adams: "The Algerian boxer was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport." This calls for a renewed discussion on the double standards of the West, which has overwhelmed us with the issues of human rights, women, and minorities... and recently moved on to stir up controversy about the rights of homosexuals and transgender.
Who can believe that the mentality, which presented us in the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics with a scene offensive to Christ for the sake of gender ideology is the same mentality that bullies a boxer, who cries out in anguish with every victory she achieves, suffering and in tears from the racism that aims to exclude an athlete from her dream of reaching the podium? Imagine for a moment that boxer Imane Khelif was carrying the flag of a Western country; how would she be celebrated and presented as a role model and an example for the creative free world despite the difficulties and the environment from which she came.
The sympathy with the case of Imane Khelif in Algeria and the Arab world is only an outcome of the bad experiences established within the Arab conscience until recently regarding previous Western stands. The Western media, for example, that scrutinized for mistakes in Qatar's organization of the 2022 World FIFA Cup, aiming to withdraw the World Cup organisation from the Arab state, is the same media that ignored the organizational scandals of the Paris Olympics even before they started. It is the same Western stance that overlooks the tragedy of the Palestinian people in Gaza...
We live in a world with multiple stereotypical ways of judging others, resulting in stories of the tragedies experienced by a large part of humans nowadays. The case of athlete Imane Khelif is just one of these scenes likely to be repeated in the near future, even though in different ways, with every international event and competition. Solidarity with such cases can prevent those with a racist outlook from indulging in their stands. As for boxer Imane Khelif, who has to face her competitors in a ring governed by clear rules, she will also have to endure facing racism that extends across digital screens. Eventually, she will win, and her case will triumph because it carries the hopes and ambitions of the peoples crushed by double-standard policies.