In an Olympic boxing ring in Paris, a well-placed punch has echoed across the world. In 46 seconds, Algerian boxing champion Imane Khelif succeeded in uniting a country often marked by divides and contrasts, where governmental policies, election campaigns and world events previously failed.
Khelif, 25, secured her first ever Olympic medal after winning a bout against Hungarian boxer Anna Luca Hamori in the quarterfinals of the women’s welterweight competition in Paris on Saturday.
But it was her victory over Italian Angela Carini earlier in the week in a rapid rout of 46 seconds that propelled her into a social media row based on false claims that she was a transgender athlete. The claim, echoed by figures as prominent as former President Donald Trump, X (formerly Twitter) chief Elon Musk, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, podcasting powerhouse Joe Rogan and legions of racist and antitransgender trolls on social media, has placed Khelif unwittingly at the center of Western culture wars. Her victories over Carini and Hamori have been described in terms that evoke domestic abuse and battery, despite the fact that she is a cis woman.
In her home country of Algeria, however, the controversy around her gender has managed to rally the entirety of a nation that has long defied easy categorization because of its multiethnic nature and its sprawling and varied geography: north and south, Arab and Amazigh, Mediterranean and African, the empty Saharan desert and the forested foothills of the Atlas mountains. The attacks against Khelif have prompted an unprecedented wave of solidarity, with sporting associations, state and private new channels and even the Algerian president wading in to express support for Khelif. In a tweet, Abdel Madjid Tebboune said: “Congratulations on qualifying Imane_Khelif. You have honored Algeria, Algerian women and Algerian boxing.. We will stand by your side no matter what your results are.. Good luck in the next two rounds.. and onwards Imane_Khelif viva_Algeria.”
While it is perhaps unsurprising that this sport-loving, soccer-mad nation has rallied behind an Olympian representing them, it is noteworthy that this representative is a 25-year-old woman engaging in a traditionally male sport in a society not known for its progressive attitude toward women in general.
Imane Khelif was raised in a rural village in the region of Tiaret, a province situated in the High Plateau of Algeria, famed for the equestrian martial art of fantasia — an ancient North African tradition of ceremonial cavalry charges. It’s also known for its animal husbandry and nomadic tribes, and is one of the more conservative and patriarchal regions of a conservative and patriarchal nation.
Khelif has talked about the challenges growing up in rural Tiaret in interviews with various media outlets: “It was very difficult. Especially when you live in a remote farming village, that’s far from the city center, and you’re living with people who don’t agree with or accept this situation, especially in our country — a girl boxing.” Ironically, Khelif’s father himself was reportedly against the idea of his daughter doing sports, and boxing in particular. The current mass support for Khelif, not only in Tiaret but across Algeria’s cultural, geographical, religious and ethnic divides, is surprising.
In an interview with Ennahar, a major Algerian TV channel, Khelif’s father showed the cameras around the modest house in Tiaret where his daughter grew up, calling the whole controversy an “immoral campaign,” reflecting perfectly the wider Algerian reaction of equal horror, on the one hand at the idea of an Algerian woman being labeled transgender and on the other of being unfairly cheated out of an Olympic win. “My daughter is a woman, we have all the evidence, including her birth certificate. My daughter was just stronger than the Italian boxer. She works very hard.”
He echoed the broader tendency toward interpreting the controversy as a conspiracy with geopolitical roots: “She loves her people and she loves her country. For her, love of her country is a big thing. They are attacking the country, because they know that she is representing the Algerian flag. Imane grew up with less than them, in a poor family. She probably didn’t have what these people have. She’s better than them.”
The interviewer went on to speak to friends and neighbors of Imane — all of them men — who expressed their deep pride and support for her, and recalled how she always loved sport and played outside with the boys.
In Oran, Algeria’s second largest city, a cab driver named Ahmed gave me a defiant look when asked about the controversy: “We will always stand against injustice! We Algerians will accept a lot but we will never allow bullies. This is bullying!” He jabbed at the air to emphasize his point and the car swerved dangerously. “We all support her, because she’s a daughter of Algeria.”
Ahmed’s passion is representative, with social media and coffee shops across the country suddenly discussing Khelif, often with conspiratorial undertones — that France, the U.S. or Israel are somehow behind the attacks.
Yet the roots of the controversy might lie outside of Algeria, further east. Both Khelif and fellow Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting have been targeted for harassment over claims that they are transgender. These claims originated from tests conducted by the ousted former global governing body for boxing, tests which the International Olympics Committee (IOC) described as “impossibly flawed.”
The International Boxing Association (IBA) was stripped of its governing body status last June by the IOC over numerous long-standing ethical concerns. In 2023, Khelif and Lin were disqualified from competing by the IBA after it claimed the boxers failed “to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition.” The methods and results from these eligibility tests were never disclosed, but the IBA’s Russian president, Umar Kremlev, told Russian state-owned news agency TASS in 2023 that a DNA test revealed Khelif had XY chromosomes.
The results of those tests and the legitimacy of the IBA have since been called into question, as it appears the well-timed statements made by the association may be part of a personal feud with the IOC. Kremlev began posting videos to his Telegram channel with English captions on July 31, the day before Khelif was set to fight Italian boxer Carini. The IBA released a statement that same day, stating that it felt “appropriate at this prevalent time, to address recent media statements regarding those athletes.”
Some of the earliest claims over Khelif’s gender came from a website called Reduxx Magazine, whose sourcing was largely from Russian state-owned media like TASS and Russia Today. This article rehashed Kremlev’s 2023 claims and speculated that the athletes were impacted by differences in sex development, a term that encompasses a variety of conditions.
Reduxx’s initial tweet received 4.1 million views as of Aug. 4, and the Daily Mail subsequently cited Reduxx’s article and described the website as a “feminist magazine.” Other British tabloids like the Daily Express and Telegraph would also echo these claims in their own coverage. On July 29, the antitrans online activist Libsoftiktok posted about Khelif, receiving tens of millions of views.
The topic of trans athletes has become something of a symbolic issue for conservatives in the U.S., and antitrans celebrities and online personalities were quick to jump on the claims about Khelif after her match with Carini.
Kremlev appears eager to use the ongoing culture war as a way to delegitimize the IOC, which ousted his organization and has said boxing will be dropped from the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics unless a new governing body emerges. Kremlev reportedly shouted at reporters in Paris, “We will defend women boxers wherever they compete, including the Olympics.”
Ahmed, the cab driver, used the word “el hogra,” which can be loosely translated as “bullying” but infers an even deeper sense of injustice, to describe the Khelif controversy.
El hogra is a concept as Algerian as couscous. Music, popular culture and street language regularly feature the term to describe all sorts of injustice, in almost any context: from state corruption to domestic abuse or discrimination against Algerians in France — it’s a word and an idea deeply embedded in the public imagination. With the way that misinformation has spread around Khelif and her gender, it’s no wonder that the controversy has tapped into this already existing mentality of an Algerian being unfairly treated.
Though Algeria is in many ways both conservative and patriarchal it is also, paradoxically, a country where matriarchs and women in public places are often not only accepted but lauded and celebrated. The iconic freedom fighter Djamila Bouhired, who was behind the infamous bombing of the French “Milk Bar” during the country’s anti-colonial war of independence, remains a living icon known and revered by most Algerians. Bouhired was imprisoned, tortured and systematically sexually assaulted by French authorities. Despite this she never wavered in her uncompromising stance, famously stating during her trial, “Do not forget that by killing me you will not only assassinate freedom in your country but you will not prevent Algeria from becoming free and independent.”
In 2004, the leader of the Algerian Workers’ Party, Louisa Hanoune, was the first ever female candidate to run for president in the Arab world. Women are present and visible in public administration, local, regional and national administration and all manner of jobs from traffic police to farming and agriculture.
The nature of the entire controversy has come as a surprise for many here who are baffled at the accusations against Khelif or how Algeria has managed to get embroiled in this very Western firestorm.
While the narrative presented by the likes of Rowling and Musk is of a trans rights movement that has gone too far, part of a wider “culture war” in the West, for most Algerians that rights movement and that war simply do not exist. Here, especially for the older generations, the concept of gender is black and white — you’re either a woman or a man and there is no in between or changing once it’s assigned at birth.
Algerian society has found itself in the middle of a controversy it does not fully understand, at times alongside strange bedfellows it does not agree with, with some perhaps having to face up to realities normally ignored. In an interview with the Daily Mail Online, TV anchor Youcef Zaghba, who said that he grew up in the same place as Khelif, simply dismissed the existence of trans people in Algeria: “There is not a single transgender person living in Algeria because all components of Algeria categorically reject this idea. We are Muslims and for us this matter is forbidden and it is impossible for it to happen in Algeria.”
“There is a kind of communal schizophrenia in Algeria around gender,” Djamila Sahraoui, a social worker who specializes in sexual health and works with marginalized groups in Oran, said in an interview with New Lines. She dismissed Zaghba’s words as nonsense: “Just because they have to hide, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. … It is illegal to change your name or have gender-affirming care, and though trans people are for the most part not acknowledged in Algeria, there is no law per se against being trans.”
Homosexuality, though, is illegal, even if the law prohibiting it is not very actively implemented. There are well-loved and respected public figures that are openly homosexual, trans or who do not fit conservative gender or sexuality norms. Cheb Abdou, an iconic traditional “rai” singer who lives and works in Algeria, openly sings and talks about his homosexuality, including his X-rated sexual habits, and is left in peace by authorities and loved and respected by many Algerians.
Sahraoui admits to having mixed feelings about the response to the controversy in Algeria, especially since Khelif’s appearance was openly scorned in the country in the past.
“On the one hand it’s heartwarming to see a woman do sports and the entire nation unite in solidarity. But since they were the first to bully her — because she was bullied for years because of her appearance by Algerians first, people forget — I feel like there’s a deep level of hypocrisy here. As soon as Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling come along, Algerians are like ‘no one has the right to bully her except us,’” she said, incredulous. ”A bully who doesn’t like bullies?” She again used the word hogra, encapsulating a distinctly Algerian protest against a perceived injustice.
Sahraoui did say, however, that the conversation had provoked a discussion that is “important for a society like ours. Suddenly, terms like intersex, gender identity and more accepting definitions of womanhood have become part of a national dialogue, which is surprising.” Perhaps the wave of racialized and misogynistic vitriol from politicians and media has allowed a more nuanced perspective to emerge, for a culture and people that are not really used to levels of international publicity on this scale involving one of their citizens.
The solidarity has been widely felt. One X user said, “This is the first time Algerians experienced this type of solidarity since the revolution.”
Sahraoui said that more work needed to be done on the issues raised by the controversy. Earlier this summer, the country was engulfed in a debate sparked by an online fatwa that declared it unacceptable for women to eat ice cream in public because of the provocative nature of the act of licking the ice cream. Sahraoui said she hoped that when it comes to rights and individual freedoms for all in Algeria, Khelif and her performance will be a step in the right direction.
“The International Boxing Association has oppressed me, but I have God. God is Great!” a tearful Khelif said after her winning fight with Hammori on Saturday (the Hungarian boxer, incidentally, spent the run up to their fight casting doubt on Khelif’s womanhood). This is not the first time Imane has faced barriers because of who she is and it won’t be the last — whether around her race, her body or her gender — but if anyone has proven that they can ignore the haters, while fighting for their dreams and their country, it would be Imane Khelif.
With additional reporting by Alec D’Angelo.
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