In fact, the words “Islam” and “Muslim” are not even mentioned in this CNN article.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — It is rare that you see a football match interrupted by a military helicopter landing. But that is what the Afghan women’s football team, a group of remarkably hardened and brave soccer enthusiasts, regularly face.

That’s after the death threats, and parental disapproval and the ostracizing. You see to many Afghans, in this conservative society, women just aren’t meant to play sports at all.

Khalida Popal, their captain, has received threatening text messages from those who say she must stop shaming her society. She’s even persevered in the face of her family telling her to stop playing for her own safety.

“I love football and football is everything for me and when I come and feel the football I forget everything and I become very happy when I see my team”, she said.

Now her team has a real problem on their hands: They have nowhere to practice.

For the past few months, they were allowed into the main stadium in Kabul. It’s where the Taliban used to publicly execute people — but now it’s covered in real grass.

Not that the girls got used to it: They were relegated to a patch of concrete down at one end.

But even that’s now out of bounds — local officials telling them they can’t use the space any more.

So we join them in a strange new world. NATO has taken pity on them and loaned them a small patch of grass just inside the outer walls of its main headquarters in Kabul.