“I’m thinking about every single point, I’m running through my head what I could have done differently”, she said. Russia, Japan and Great Britain round out the top five teams in a competition where the slightest sign of imperfection could cost a team a trip to the podium.
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Recruited to go to Duke on an academic scholarship in 2003.
The stars and stripes glinted prominently on the metal mesh of Muhammad’s mask on Monday. How good is she at singing the praises of the land of the free which allows her the protection and religious freedom to practice as she wishes and have the honor to represent our nation overseas? When a reporter asked her about Trump, she simply said, “Who?”
A medal, of course, would have made it an even bigger platform for Muhammad. “I want to be that image for minority youth”.
“I wish that, not just my life, but the lives of Muslims all over the world were a little bit easier. When I feel like I executed an action well and the referee doesn’t call it in my favor, it can be frustrating”.
Muhammad stays quite busy as a public figure. She speaks all around the world and loves to teach the sport. And in 2014, Muhammad launched her own clothing company, Louella, which aims to “bring modest, fashion forward clothing to the world”, as her website states. It was easy focus Muhammad as a groundbreaker and forget the very basic fact that, at 31, she had spent a lifetime training and preparing for this moment. “I just kept making a lot of mistakes”.
This all comes even as she gets profiled, airport time always extended for her and her family. She now lives and trains in NY, knowing that her presence in Rio is significant whether she wins a medal or not. She spoke earnestly, eloquently and frequently, encouraging Muslim-American girls to be more active and challenging society’s perceptions of who Muslims are. There is not much knowledge of African American Muslims.
“I don’t think my struggle is any different than anyone else’s. They probably think the police raided our house”. “And again, it’s challenging those misconceptions that people have about who the Muslim woman is”.
After easily disposing of an Australian team appearing in their first Games, Olympic vets Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross are back on the Copacabana court to face off against China’s best and 17th seed in Rio, Fan Wang and Yuan Yue.
A day after adding a record 19th gold medal to his collection, Michael Phelps swam in preliminaries of the men’s 200 meter butterfly, where he holds the Olympic record, and fellow American Katie Ledecky is focusing on the women’s 200 meter freestyle. Her Olympic debut was a big win for diversity, results aside. Kulsoom Abdullah, a Pakistani-American weightlifter, was the first person ever to compete in the sport internationally while wearing a hijab.
At the opening ceremonies, Muhammad took pictures with women from Saudi Arabia.
In those ways and many more, Ibtihaj Muhammad’s Olympic story isn’t all that unique after all.
Her religion had made headlines and she had patiently faced the media in recent months, answering every question, determined to serve as an example at a time when Islam is so controversial in USA politics and the news.
Were you hoping Donald Trump was watching?
Ibtihaj Muhammad, 30, is from New Jersey and began fencing at age 13 – relatively late for a future Olympian. The United States finished fifth in the team all-around, with their score of 44.441 on the horizontal bar being the final nail in their coffin in regards to earning a medal.
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Particularly in this year, when the Muslim-American community has become part of the divisive rhetoric in the presidential campaign, Muhammad’s mere presence felt like something far more significant. Earlier this year, Time magazine named her on their list of “The 100 Most Influential People”. “I don’t think of any of them as hard”. Growing up it was always an honor to be all of those things.
