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News > Sport

First US Athlete in History Competes at Olympics in Hijab

  • "How can you not see that Muslims are like any other group?” Ibtihaj Muhammad said at press conference on Aug. 8, 2016. | Photo: AFP

Published 8 August 2016
Opinion

The U.S. fencer is not just a Muslim woman but a vocal opponent of Donald Trump's racist policies.

Ibtihaj Muhammad made history Monday, becoming the first U.S. athlete to compete in a hijab—a Muslim veil covering her head—at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

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“A lot of people don’t believe that Muslim women have voices or that we participate in sport,” Muhammad, 30, commented after she was ultimately eliminated from the competition by France’s Cecilia Berder after winning her opener. “And it’s not just to challenge misconceptions outside the Muslim community but within the Muslim community. I want to break cultural norms.”

Speaking at a press conference, the Duke University graduate insisted on fighting the stereotypes surrounding Islam and the Muslim community in the United States and abroad.

"How can you not see that Muslims are like any other group?” she said. “We are conservatives and we are liberals. There are women who cover and women who don't. There are African-American Muslims, there are white Muslims, there are Arab Muslims.”

"It's not just to challenge the misconceptions outside the Muslim community," she said of her decision to don a hijab, "but also within the Muslim community."

She also expressed her content and gratefulness for having met members of the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti teams who also wear hijab.

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Responding to a question on the biggest misconception about her, Muhammad answered: "That someone is forcing me to wear hijab, that I'm oppressed, that I don't have a voice. Anyone who knows me knows me that I'm very vocal, very verbal and very comfortable expressing myself and I've always been like that."

Since she was selected in the U.S. fence team, she has rarely missed an opportunity to use her media platform to speak out against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his racist proposals—including the imposition of a blanket ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

Trump is “providing a platform for hate speech and fearmongering” and “creating a space where it’s acceptable to speak out against immigrants, to speak out against Muslims and to really publicize this inherent racism that I feel a lot of people have,” she said in a Feb. interview with the Daily Mail.

“The Civil Rights Movement wasn’t that long ago. Segregation wasn’t that long ago. Japanese internment wasn’t that long ago,” she warned.

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