FIFA has proposed a rule change in response, any player who touches the ball will have his hand amputated.

(Al Arabiya) — An announcement by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood that it intends to establish its own soccer teams to compete in the country’s professional leagues has sparked significant debate and taunts on social media.

Speaking at the opening of a brotherhood community city in Tanta, the group’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, said: “We are going to launch TV channels soon, as well as sport clubs to compete in the Egyptian League and Cup.”

The move is as much of the result of close cooperation between the youth group of the brotherhood, which was banned under President Hosni Mubarak, and militant soccer fans during the mass anti-government protests that in February toppled Mr. Mubarak as it is an effort to capitalize on the sport’s widespread popularity and the deep-seated emotions it evokes.

Young Muslim Brothers and militant supporters of Cairo soccer rivals Al Ahly SC and Al Zamalek SC connected on the city’s Tahrir Square during 18 days of protests in January and February this year.

The two groups, the only ones on the square with any experience in street battles with the police, manned the demonstrators’ frontlines in violent clashes with Mr. Mubarak’s police and supporters of the former president.

The Brotherhood’s move into soccer also constitutes an endorsement of the sport at a time that Egyptian Salafis, some of whom view soccer as a game of the infidels, are asserting themselves in post-Mubarak Egypt. Authorities have in recent weeks blamed Salafis for the destruction of religious shrines, which they see as expressions of idolatry, as well as for attacks on liquor stores, Christians and suspected brothels.

An Egyptian Salafi cleric, Abu Ishaaq Al Huwayni, in 2010 denounced soccer as a form of fun banned by Islam.