Let us pause, dear reader, and reflect on a spectacle that would have made Gibbon smile wryly from his grave. A Somali football referee, barred from entering the United States on grounds that remain conveniently opaque, is now receiving a hero’s welcome in Mogadishu. Meanwhile, British officials – those same guardians of sporting integrity who once lectured the world on fair play – are wringing their hands over the integrity of the World Cup. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a scimitar.
What we are witnessing is not merely a bureaucratic spat or a case of visa irregularities. It is a symptom of a civilisation in decline, a West that has lost the nerve to enforce its own rules. The referee in question, Mr. Mukhtar, was denied entry to the US for reasons that might be entirely legitimate: perhaps he has links to dubious organisations, or perhaps his paperwork was not in order. Yet rather than accepting this as a routine matter of sovereign discretion, we have a narrative of victimhood, a celebration of the man as a martyr, and a chorus of voices questioning the fairness of the entire World Cup qualification process.
This is the logic of the decadent empire. When a Somali referee is treated as a cause célèbre, when British officials start muttering about “integrity” only after a perceived slight to a non-Western figure, we are witnessing the inversion of values that once defined our civilisation. In the Victorian era, a British official would have said: “The rule of law applies to all, and if this gentleman cannot enter the United States, there is likely a good reason.” Today, the reflex is to assume bad faith, to undermine the very idea of national borders and legal procedures.
Consider the historical parallel. The late Roman Empire became obsessed with “fairness” in the distribution of bread and circuses, while neglecting the discipline of the legions. Rome’s frontiers grew porous, its citizenship rights were extended to all manner of peoples without demanding assimilation or loyalty, and eventually the barbarians walked in. Now, we fret about a referee’s travel woes while our own institutions – from border control to sporting authorities – are made to look arbitrary and prejudiced. The World Cup, that great global festival of athleticism, is reduced to a stage for identity politics.
The real question is not whether the US had valid grounds to bar Mr. Mukhtar. It is whether we have the collective backbone to say: there are rules, there are reasons, and not every slight against a foreign national is an act of oppression. The hero’s welcome in Mogadishu is a damning indictment: it suggests that being barred by the West is now a badge of honour, a way to gain status in the globalised marketplace of grievances. And the British officials, by questioning the integrity of the World Cup rather than the integrity of the US process, are playing into this narrative.
What has become of the stiff upper lip? What has become of the assumption that Western institutions, for all their flaws, operate on principles of law and order? We have become a civilisation of apologists, forever bowing before the altar of multicultural victimhood. The Somali referee is not a hero; he is a man who cannot enter a country. The World Cup is not tainted; it is a tournament that will proceed regardless of one official’s absence. But in the fevered imagination of our intellectual class, every such incident becomes a parable of Western hypocrisy, a nail in the coffin of our moral authority.
Let us be clear. I do not know the details of Mr. Mukhtar’s case. Perhaps he was unjustly treated. That is a matter for the courts and diplomatic channels. But the outpouring of support, the questioning of British officials, the symbolic crowning of a man as a hero – this is the decadence of a society that no longer believes in itself. Rome fell because it lost the will to be Rome. Britain and America, if they continue on this path of reflexive self-flagellation, will follow suit.
The Somali referee will have his moment in the sun. The World Cup will go on. But the rot has set in. And as the historian in me notes, empires do not fall with a bang; they fall with a whimper, often over seemingly trivial matters – like a visa denial for a football official.
Arthur Penhaligon
