Football body votes to lift headscarf ban

Game’s rule makers agree at meeting to overturn controversial ban on the wearing of hijab.

Football’s international rule makers have agreed to overturn the controversial ban on the wearing of headscarf, or hijab, in matches. The issue had reached the level of the United Nations, which wrote to FIFA to ask for the law to be scrapped.

FIFA took the decison on Saturday to lift the ban at its annual board meeting chaired by Sepp Blatter, the association’s president.

The headscarf that is worn by many Muslim women was banned from top-level games five years ago on safety grounds.
 
Al Jazeera’s Andy Richardson reports.