Today, while checking my daily news on Current, I ran across this gem of an article:

Muslim Sportswomen Gain Standing in Beijing

AMMAN , Jordan (WOMENSENEWS)--Even before the Beijing Summer Olympics begin on Friday, Habiba Hinai is tasting victory.

For the first time her country is sending a female Olympian to the games. Buthaina Yaqoubi, 16, will compete in the 100-meter dash and either the long jump or the triple jump.

Hinai, one of three women to represent Oman by bearing the Olympic torch during the relay earlier this year, is vice-chair of Oman's Volleyball Association, the highest position for any woman in the country's sports scene.

For 18 years she has advocated for the advancement of women's athletics in her country, seeing it expand from an activity only available in schools in 1993 to the formation of national women's volleyball, tennis and table tennis teams in 2004.

Now that her country is sending female competitors to the games, Hinai says she can start looking forward to the day when more Muslim women join the International Olympic Committee and Olympic Asian Committee. "That's the only way to develop sports in the Muslim world."

    Kickass!  I can’t even imagine how thrilling (and intimidating) it must be to be one of the first women to ever represent your nation on the global athletic stage!  The article goes on to talk about female (under)representation in other predominantly Muslim nations.  It includes a bit of an Olympics history lesson:

Women's participation in the Olympics has been a particularly sensitive subject since 1992.

That year, 35 countries--half of them Muslim--sent no female athletes to the Barcelona Games.

To lower those numbers two French advocates, Annie Sugier and Linda Weil-Curiel, founded a group called Atlanta Plus to work on requiring countries to include women in their Olympic delegations.

Weil-Curiel, a lawyer, says all-male delegations contravene the Olympic charter's prohibition against all forms of discrimination. She has been lobbying the International Olympic Committee for years to impose sanctions on nations that bar women from competing.

    Below is the IOC anti-discrimination policy, taken from an earlier article I’d found in The Huffington Post about Saudi Arabia and Qatar each sending ZERO women to this year’s Olympic Games:

One of the 6 "Fundamental Principles of Olympism," as expressed in the charter of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is that "Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement." The Charter further states that "The IOC's role is...to act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement."

    Technically, then, nations including Oman had been violating this charter of the IOC for at least the past four Olympic Games.  Disheartening as it may be to hear that there are still other nations banning their female athletes from the 2008 Games, I am thrilled to read about Hinai and her peers truly becoming a part of history.  So, my thank-you for today goes to Annie Sugier and Linda Weil-Curiel, the two women who successfully paved the way for young female athletes to represent their homelands in the Olympics.  You guys rock!