Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al\u2011Shaair has been fined $11,593 by the NFL for wearing eye black bearing the political message \u201cstop the genocide” during last Monday\u2019s wild\u2011card victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, ESPN reported Sunday.<\/p>\n
According to the outlet, Al\u2011Shaair violated the league\u2019s equipment rule prohibiting players from \u201cwearing eye black that contained a personal message.” He wore the message both during the game and in a postgame interview on SportsCenter, according to the New York Post.<\/p>\n
The eye\u2011black message referenced the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas – an issue Al\u2011Shaair, who is Muslim, has highlighted previously through the NFL\u2019s \u201cMy Cause My Cleats” initiative.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it\u2019s something that\u2019s trying to be almost silenced,” Al\u2011Shaair told the Houston Chronicle during the 2024 season. \u201cOn either side, people losing their life is not right. In no way, shape or form am I validating anything that happened, but to consistently say that because of [Oct. 7] innocent people [in Gaza] should now die, it\u2019s crazy. [Other people] try to make a disconnect and dehumanize people over there. And it\u2019s like, they\u2019re human beings. Being a Muslim, we see everybody the same; Black, white, Spanish, whatever you are; you can be orange, like, we\u2019re all human beings.”<\/p>\n
The fine marks another instance of the league enforcing its ban on political messaging through uniforms or equipment. Last season, the San Francisco 49ers\u2019 Nick Bosa was fined $11,255 for interrupting teammate Brock Purdy\u2019s postgame interview while wearing a \u201cMake America Great Again” hat supporting President Donald Trump weeks before the 2024 election.<\/p>\n
Reports at the time noted that Bosa\u2019s hat violated rule 5, section 4, article 8 of the NFL rulebook, which states that players \u201care prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages\u2026 unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office.”<\/p>\n
Al\u2011Shaair, 28, is in his seventh NFL season and earned his first Pro Bowl selection this year after recording 103 tackles and nine passes defended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al\u2011Shaair has been fined $11,593 by the NFL for wearing eye black bearing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[108,51107,4118,42,43,16663,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-245772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-anti-israel","tag-fine","tag-football","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}