From TIME.com
By Arsalan Iftikhar @TheMuslimGuy September 09, 2013
Before we recently learned that the 2020 Summer Olympic Games was officially awarded to Tokyo, Japan by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), there were literally hundreds of millions of people around the world who had our fingers crossed and earnestly hoped that Istanbul, Turkey would finally become the first Muslim-majority country in history to ever host the Summer Olympic Games.
Istanbul made it to the final round of voting against Tokyo after beating Madrid in a tiebreaker round of voting where Istanbul received 49 votes to Madrid’s 45 votes. But in the final round of voting, Tokyo ultimately beat Istanbul with a final vote of 60 to 36.
So Japan will get to host the Olympics for the third time (they also hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics and 1972 and 1988 Winter Olympics) while Turkey has never been chosen even once, despite having been in the running five times.
Since nearly 57 out of 193 countries (29.5%) in the United Nations (aka “the world”) are Muslim-majority nations, the fact that a Muslim nation has never hosted an Olympics games is truly baffling. “No country with a majority of Muslim population has ever hosted the Olympics…Why? What is missing [in these countries]?” asked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey during a July 2012 interview about his quest for his nation to become the first. “This is the third [Olympics] for London…Madrid was the host twice,” he continued. “Tokyo has hosted three games. Istanbul has [unsuccessfully] bid to host the Olympics five times but has never been handed the rights. This is not a fair approach.”
