Weekend Perspective: Faith, Football and...

Basilica di Santa Cecilia, Trastevere, Rome.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

Thinking about #Argentina and

#CAR 

#SouthSudan

#Gaza #Palestine 

#Israel 

#Syria #Iraq 

#Ukraine 

#notjustfootball

Weekend Perspective: Faith and Football

In cultures around the world, soccer (football for everyone else) has long been as much a part of daily life as religion. Often during my travels, I never lack for occasions to observe both remarkable religious structures and young people playing the game. Morocco is no exception, and although the country has not qualified for the World Cup since 1998, the passion for this universal sport is always front and center.

(Click for larger photos and slideshow.)

The former Synagogue in El Jadida, 

whose Jewish community was once so sizable

it boasted 12 Jewish temples.

Whether in a tiny, colorful medina alleyway, or on a desolate street whose modern decay contrasts to what is just inside the old city walls, soccer pitches both improvised and planned are as common here as churches are in Italian cities. Snapshots of the Moroccan urban landscape reveal a continuous hodge-podge of shops, houses and playing "fields," with the mosques, former synagogues, and rare church acting as its hinges. 

See more photos and read about my visit to Morocco in Back to the Maghreb

Casablanca's Grand Mosque Hassan II.

A mother and her children pass below one of the arcades that compose the Hassan II complex.