Islam Has Always Backed Sport. Here’s What One New Paper Shows
Plenty of people picture Islam as a faith that cares about prayer, fasting and the inner life, and has little to say about the body. A paper published in The SKY International Journal of Physical Education and Sports Sciences takes that idea apart.
Saba Ansari and Usman Ayub (2026) went through the Quran, the Prophetic traditions and classical Islamic jurisprudence. What they found is a faith that treats strength and health as part of a balanced life, not a side topic.
Let’s break it down.
What the Quran says
The clearest verse is Surah al-Baqarah 2:247. Talut is chosen as leader and described as someone given extra knowledge and physical stature. Classical scholars like al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi read that as physical strength and good health being a gift from God, sitting right next to intellectual ability.
Surah al-Jumuah 62:10 tells believers that once the prayer ends, they should spread out across the land and seek God’s bounty. Al-Qurtubi took this as a direct answer to the idea that devotion means sitting still.
Then there is Surah al-Qasas 28:26, where the best person to hire is described as the strong and trustworthy one. The paper points out that Ibn Ashur read physical capability as a legitimate, religiously recognized quality for work and leadership.
What the Prophet did
The Sunnah goes beyond encouragement. It shows him doing it.
- He told parents to teach their children archery and swimming.
- He raced his wife Aisha. She beat him in one race, and he won a later one.
- He wrestled Rukanah and won.
- He said the strong believer is better and more loved by Allah than the weak believer, and that there is good in both.
That last line gets unpacked by al-Nawawi, who explained that strength covers the body, the faith, the personality and the mind. Physical strength made the list because it lets a believer worship more, protect the community and look after family.
Five principles from the paper
The authors pull everything into five ideas.
- Physical strength is a religious value.
- Sport is permitted and encouraged.
- Sport has ethical limits.
- Health is a trust from Allah, known as amanah.
- Physical activity does social good.
Where the lines are
The paper is clear that Islam backs sport with conditions. Gambling is out, which rules out betting and fantasy sports with entry fees. Harm is out, which means unsafe training and deliberate injury are not acceptable. Prayer comes before practice and competition. Modesty applies on the field as much as anywhere else.
The authors carry these rules into modern problems too. Doping fails twice, since it can harm the body and it involves deception. Match-fixing falls under the Prophet’s warning against cheating. Exploiting young athletes runs against the Islamic emphasis on justice.
One more idea deserves attention. The paper highlights niyyah, or intention. A workout done to keep the body healthy as a trust from Allah, to stay fit for worship, or to set a good example can turn from a permitted activity into something that earns reward. That is a strong way to talk to a teenager who thinks the gym and the mosque belong to different worlds.
What it means for schools
This is where the paper gets practical. The authors argue that physical education should be compulsory in Muslim settings, not an optional extra, since the Prophet himself told parents to train their kids. They suggest swimming, archery and horsemanship as models, and say modern versions like target sports, strength training and self defence fit the same logic. They also want sportsmanship taught as a religious value, which means controlling anger, respecting opponents, and winning and losing with grace.
Schools can fit religious life around the timetable by scheduling around prayer times and keeping Ramadan activity moderate or placing it in the morning.
On girls and women, the paper makes a point worth repeating. The Prophet racing Aisha shows that women are encouraged to be active. The authors say the real obstacles are cultural habits and a lack of proper facilities and equipment, not the teaching itself. Single-sex sessions, modest sportswear built for movement and non-contact options in mixed settings are all on the table.
My take
This paper does something useful. It gives teachers, coaches and parents a religious reason to say yes to sport, in places where the answer has often been a shrug or a no.
It is also fair about its limits. The authors admit it is theoretical, with no field testing of Islamic-based PE programs. It leans on Sunni sources and leaves Shia views for later work. It also does not fully deal with disability and the strong believer hadith, though they note al-Nawawi’s reading that there is good in both the strong and the weak.
Those gaps are worth closing, and the authors suggest studies on Ramadan and performance, sportswear design and mental health. For now, the main message stands. The question is no longer whether Islam supports physical activity. It is how we build programs that live up to it.
Read the full paper here https://doi.org/10.51846/the-sky.v10i1.5432
Reference Ansari, S., & Ayub, U. (2026). Promoting physical activity and sports from an Islamic perspective. The SKY International Journal of Physical Education and Sports Sciences, 10(1), 6 to 18.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Opinion Desk.