American cover story
HoopGurlz: Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- George Blake, the athletic director at New Leadership Charter School, is accustomed to being displaced by his program's star athlete. Many days, his office is where Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, a devout Muslim, prays. It's either there, or the nurse's office at the school's Spartan, perpetually temporary quarters.
One recent day, Blake's office houses one of Abdul-Qaadir's mounting interview sessions.
"I didn't realize this was 60 Minutes," he quips after Abdul-Qaadir emerges, having held court a while longer than Blake had expected.
"We do our best to accommodate all of our athletes," Blake says later, but it is clear one of them is accommodated more than others. Not that the 5-foot-3 Abdul-Qaadir demands anything resembling star treatment. She could, having broken Rebecca Lobo's iconic Massachusetts state scoring record in January, but her religion requires, among other things, humility and for Abdul-Qaadir to have donned hijab, covering for head and limbs for modesty, for each of her 2,170 points and beyond.
Abdul-Qaadir prays five times a day, sometimes breaking from class or practice, to do so. She fasts from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan. And when someone in the opposing rooting section yells, "terrorist," or some other derogatory at her, Blake calls a colleague in an effort to defuse and educate.
Blake has known Abdul-Qaadir since she was 4. He coached her in a youth league and knew back then he had a prodigy on his hands. The league mandated all defenders keep at least one foot in the foul lane, and Abdul-Qaadir figured out how to score at will with perimeter shots launched just beyond their reach.
Abdul-Qaadir's mother and father, Alooah and Tariq, both are converted Muslims who have formed their own version of the circle of life. Born Karen Humphrey and Charles Cross, they were high-school sweethearts who went their separate ways, then reunited some 10 years after Alooah had converted to Islam. Looking for a change at the time, Tariq says he came to see Alooah's "vision" of a world and life together, and recited the Shahadah (Islamic creed) to join it.
Bilqis is the product of their resulting marriage. In addition to Islam, Alooah, a former track star who tried basketball but thought it had too many rules, and Tariq, a baseball player with great swiftness in his younger days, gifted their daughter with their speed and athleticism, and encouraged her love of basketball, also fostered by a trio of brothers, the youngest of which, Yusuf, went on to play at Bentley, a Division II school in Waltham, Mass.
Her parents and friends, even her future coach at the University of Memphis, Melissa McFerrin, all call her "Qisi," which rhymes with "easy." It's all been anything but; however, she has made it appear so.
She is the head of her class academically at New Leadership, wants to be a heart surgeon because she is fascinated by the human organ as well as its symbolism of human conditions, and views her recent acclaim as a battering ram to break down walls and stereotypes.
The self-described "Muslim covering girl" has, in other words, become a snapshot of the new America.
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Glenn Nelson is a senior writer at ESPN.com and the founder of HoopGurlz.com. A member of the McDonald's All-American and Parade All-American Selection Committees, he formerly coached girls club basketball, was the editor-in-chief of an online sports network, and was a longtime, national-award-winning newspaper columnist and writer. He can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com.
