Mohamed Aboutrika

Mohamed Aboutrika is an Egyptian retired professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder and second striker, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest African and Arab players of all time. ¹ Born in Nahia, Giza in 1978, he came through Tersana before joining Al Ahly in 2004, earned 100 caps and scored 38 goals for Egypt, and won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2006 and 2008, scoring the winning goal in the 2008 final. ¹ The sources file him generically as a Muslim and name no school for him, so his data record leaves his faith as unknown. ¹²

Aboutrika began his senior career at Tersana, the Giza club where he had played as a youth from 1990, scoring 27 goals in 52 league appearances between 1997 and 2003. ¹ In 2004 he joined Al Ahly, where he became the creative centre of the side that dominated Egyptian and African football: across nine years he made 362 appearances and scored 156 goals for the club, before a short loan at Baniyas in the United Arab Emirates in 2013 closed his playing career. ¹ The Arabic article describes his playmaking style — vision, dribbling and penetration — as comparable to Zinedine Zidane's. ³

Aboutrika made his senior debut for Egypt in 2001 and went on to win 100 caps, scoring 38 goals. ¹ He won the Africa Cup of Nations on home soil in 2006 and again in Ghana in 2008, where he scored the winning goal in the final against Cameroon. ¹ He also helped Al Ahly take the bronze medal at the 2006 FIFA Club World Cup, and in 2012 played as an overage player for Egypt's Olympic team in London. ¹

Aboutrika graduated from Cairo University with a bachelor's degree in philosophy, is married and has five children, one of whom, Ahmed, is also a professional footballer. ¹ As his fame grew he became known for humanitarian work and philanthropy in Egypt, and for public expressions of sympathy with Gaza, including a shirt message shown during the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations. ¹³ After the 2013 military coup his assets were frozen in 2015 over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and on 17 January 2017 Egypt added him to a terrorism list; he denied any involvement with the Brotherhood, and his appeals against the asset freeze were rejected. ¹

The English article makes no statement of Aboutrika's religion in its text; its categories file him under "Egyptian Muslims", and the Arabic article does the same. ¹³ The Arabic article also quotes his own words on Islam treating poverty through zakat, and Wikidata gives his religion as Islam, generically. ³² His widely reported piety is practice and reportage, not an attestation of a school, and no source read names a madhhab for him personally, so his record states his faith as unknown. ¹

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