The Chicago Tribune’s article on Muslim girls who play basketball has a completely inappropriate cheery tone for its disturbing subject—the dark ages repression of young girls, now in a Chicago suburb: They’ve got game—and hijab. (Hat tip: Ethel.)

Duaa Hamoud holds a basketball to her hip. She is standing in a long blue gown in a gym at Bridgeview’s Universal School. Her head is covered in a white scarf pulled tightly around her neck. Not a wisp of hair is showing.

Around her, other high school girls dressed in similar flowing robes shoot a few casual baskets while they wait for practice to begin. There are no men in the gym—no male coaches, no boys from school, no dads or brothers in the bleachers.

So when the coach arrives and the real training starts, they can peel off their Islamic dress, exposing their sweat pants and short-sleeved T-shirts underneath.

“We’d run if we noticed a man peeking in the window,” Hamoud, 16, explains. “We’re not allowed to be seen by guys without [Islamic dress]. We’ve all learned to accept that.”

But the girls can’t accept that they have only been allowed to compete against girls basketball teams from other Muslim schools. There are only four in the Chicago area, they complain, and their competition isn’t exactly tough.

Since last year they’ve been beseeching Coach Farida Abusafa, 26, an English teacher who also coaches sports, to ask public schools and non-Muslim private schools if their girls teams would be willing to compete against girls from the Universal School.

The problem is the schools would have to agree to bar men and boys above the age of puberty from watching the games.

“It’s not like it’s a sin to play a public school,” Abusafa said. “The problem is the males coming to the game.”

How long before men are barred from watching basketball, to accommodate the sensitivities of this intolerant, misogynistic strain of Islam? Here’s an LGF search for the area where the Universal School (which is anything but universal) is located: Bridgeview.