Calgary, Canada - When players in Afghanistan's burgeoning women's soccer league take to the field, many have a co-ordinating piece of uniform not often seen in western games.
"You'll see some teams wearing matching headscarves or matching baseball caps," says Waist Ayub, the founder and director of the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange.
"It's really up to each girl, and the variation they choose to wear. I've seen teams where they'll wrap a handkerchief around their head, so it's a little bit more free flowing and still covers their head."
Many of these players follow religious rules that dictate modest dress, including covering their hair and wearing long, loose-fitting clothes.
How and whether to integrate such beliefs into sport in Canada has been hotly debated as a series of girls and young women have been barred from various competitions for refusing to remove their hijabs, the Muslim headscarves that cover the hair and neck.
Those opposed to hijabs on the field or in the gym say it's about safety, because the scarf could tighten around the neck or fall off and become a hazard for another player.
Others argue that safe sport and religious observance isn't mutually exclusive.
"People might say it's not about race, it's not about religion, but then why not talk to people about how to make the playing and sporting environment safer, if that's really the concern?" said Yuka Nakamura, a PhD student at the University of Toronto who wrote a paper on Muslim women's participation in sport. She said some women pull their scarves back with elastics like ponytails when playing sports.
"The fact that it's so black and white, I think, is a little problematic."
In Canada, three sports have been the focus of concern - soccer, judo and taekwondo.
Earlier this year, an 11-year-old Ottawa girl was thrown out of an indoor soccer tournament in Laval, Que., for refusing to remove her hijab. Not long after, a taekwondo team of mainly Muslim girls from Montreal was asked to leave a tournament because five of the six girls wore headscarves.
Late last month, an 11-year-old girl broke down in tears after she was banned from a judo tournament in Winnipeg for the same reason.
Days later, a 14-year-old girl wearing a hijab was ejected from a soccer game in Calgary. Safaa Menhem was later allowed to play in a tournament on Saturday with a slightly modified hijab, tied at the back of the neck rather than under the chin.
The issue has often become political.
A review was ordered after the latest judo case in Manitoba, and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach asked his recreation minister to help work out the soccer issue in his province. Alberta Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, who is Muslim, has said that kicking kids out of sporting events is not the way to help communities live together in harmony.
Nakamura says she has only heard of the hijab being considered a sport safety issue in Canada, but it has become more of an issue in other ways globally in recent years.
In France, the hijab has been banned in public schools, and in some instances in Australia, Muslim women have been attacked on their street and their veils snatched free. Norway and Britain have also struggled with the issue.
"I think, in light of a post-9-11 context, what's going on in Afghanistan and Iraq and so on, I think how Muslim women are perceived in the West is influencing those kinds of reactions to being a woman in a hijab, either on the street or in a sporting context," said Nakamura.
Despite the concerns, there isn't much research on whether hijabs do pose a safety risk and, if so, whether variations such as elastic sport hijabs which pull free when grabbed are any safer.
Local groups often rely on their international bodies to decide if hijabs are allowed.
Telly Mercury, head of the legal committee for Judo Canada, says any change will have to come from that level.
"You don't take items like this, for safety gear, and try them out on young people. You have to have some research done on it and all the rest of it, like they do for hockey helmets," he said.
"Once they're approved, and they're approved by the body that knows more about the sport than anybody else, then of course, we'd all have to go by the rules."
Nakamura would rather see solutions found quickly at the local level. Her research and that of others shows that if women turn away from sport, it's hard to get them back.
"We're trying to promote participation, positive experiences in physical activity and sport, especially for girls, and there's all this talk of obesity epidemics and so on," she said.
"I would imagine we should be trying to facilitate their participation, rather than restricting it."
Ayub says her experiences in Afghanistan have shown just how important it is for children to be involved in sports in order to foster self-confidence and problem-solving. She says the lessons learned there show there's always a compromise.
"I've seen so many different variations (on how to wear the hijab), and it's really just proven to me that there is a middle ground and that they can co-exist, sports and religion."