Any sport that is based exclusively on hitting your opponent repeatedly in the fact with the intention of knocking him would not seem a likely way to unite people. And, yet, it is the sport of boxing that has very often brought diverse groups together and tore down barriers of culture, historically and presently.

Tunisian filmmaker Hichem Ben Ammar has just released a new documentary (Choft Ennoujoum Fil Kaila [And I Saw Stars]) that proves just that. Bringing back to life the era of Tunisian boxing in the 1930’s, ’40’s and ’50’s under the French protectorate, Ben Ammar introduces the audience to a world where Tunisian Muslims, Tunisian Jews; French, Italian and Maltese settlers would compete against one another in a spirit of mutual respect in cosmopolitan Tunis. As one the stars of that time, Jacques Chiche (a Tunisian Jew), put it to France 24: “To have a great boxing reunion, you need a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew,. . . Spectators came to support their clan. There were a few brawls but it always ended well. We celebrated, it was marvelous.” This atmosphere is not unique to the sport of boxing, but it was boxing that brought together Arabs, Jews and Westerns. Unfortunately with the advent of Tunisian independence, boxing has declined in Tunis and the Jewish community now accounts for about 1,500 and almost all European settlers have since left the country. Boxing, in as much as it continues in Tunis, no longer is the multicultural spectacle it once was. But there wil always be that time.

But where it settles down in Tunis, it picks up in Iraq. As The Economist magazine recently profiled, the Adamiya Boxing Club in Baghdad has recently reopened its doors to both Sunni and Shiite fighters. The hope is that Sunni and Shiite young boxers will once again meet and recognize their mutual ties, thus being part of the establishment of a new tolerant consensus in Iraq. These young men have also seen the violence on the streets and boxing is new way to channel their frustrations at what they see happening around them. Boxing brought cultural tolerance and peaceful co-existence in Tunisia. Will it do the same in Baghdad?