Last Sunday, sixteen-year-old amateur boxer Amaiya Zafar was ready to compete at the Sugar Bert Boxing National Championship in Kissimmee, Florida when the fight was abruptly called off. Boxing officials said that Amaiya’s attire — a hijab under headgear – was a violation of uniform regulations and a “safety issue.”
Zafar was sadly disqualified and her opponent, fifteen year old Aliyah Charbonier, declared the winner though, in a surprising twist, Charbonier resisted the win by default. As Zafar recounts: “This girl comes up to me then and puts her belt in my lap and says, ‘This is yours. They disqualified you. You’re the true winner. This is unfair.’ Then we started hugging each other, and the owner [of the event] came and got me to make sure I got [a belt.]”
“It’s just not right,” declared Charbonier. “It’s not really a distraction for me what she’s wearing. She still had on gloves and headgear. I felt really bad for her. They didn’t give her a chance to fight.”
“We have 30,000 amateur boxers in the United States,” defended USA Boxing executive Michael Martino. “So if you make allowances for one religious group, what if another comes in and says we have a different type of uniform we have to wear? You have to draw a line someplace.”
