In sports, things should be banned for one of two reasons. Reason one, if the practice causes safety problems for players. Reason two, if the practice gives players an unfair competitive advantage. These are the only two reasons because a level playing field and player safety should be the two main concerns for sports programs.
Quebec's ban on turbans for soccer games has generated a fair bit of controversy, to the point where the Quebec Soccer Federation has been suspended from the Canadian Soccer Federation. The problem is that turbans are not actually covered under the two main sections of acceptable sports bans. Dr. Sanjeet Saluja, an emergency doctor at McGill University Health Centre, says that there is no evidence of any safety issues surrounding turbans, either in his experience as a doctor or a soccer player. There's also no real competitive advantage, so that reasoning is out as well. So what reason could there possibly be for banning people in turbans from playing the game?
The Quebec Soccer Federation says they're following FIFA guidelines on the matter, and that the larger organization does not allow players to wear turbans. In fact, FIFA's own equipment regulations document makes no mention of turbans. While the 92 page document goes into very specific detail about what is allowed on shirts, gloves, goalkeepers hats, and so on, it does not make any mention of the turban throughout. It does have specific mentions of headbands and medical headgear, saying they are allowed, but turbans are left out of the document. So they are taking the absence of a specific rule to indicate an overall ban. That's actually a legitimate interpretation, given how incredibly specific FIFA is on most of their other regulations.
It is tempting to say that this is a specific attack on Sikh players, who are the ones primarily affected by the turban regulation. I do not think that is the entire case, the Quebec Soccer Federation since it is one interpretation of the rule book, but I think that they're losing something by preventing those Sikh players from joining the team like everyone else. It's a simple reason that goes far beyond soccer, or even sports in general. It's about getting people together, and that's what they are missing in this controversy.
Part of sport is competition, but part of it isn't, instead being about meeting people and camaraderie that develops when a team works together to play and compete. When you have a group of people from disparate backgrounds, the sport itself provides a common ground which they can build on. The Sikh community in Quebec would get a chance to participate in a sport with people from outside of their community, as would the people who are not Sikh, and it would have an overall positive effect.
However, the issue with the ban is that it isolates one part of the community and makes it so they can't participate in one of the available sports, for arbitrary reasons. It also means that there is going to be some bad blood between different people in different areas, given the inequality and inability to participate in the same events. Whatever you think of the turban, it is still going to be seen as a direct attack on a specific group of people, which is not very good for building relationships overall.
