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LINCOLN, Neb. – (AP) – Noor Ahmed lives his Muslim religion and has even grown up in a state as diverse as California. She said she encountered hostility on the street, at school and on the golf course.
One of the top junior golfers in northern California graduating from high school, Ahmed was a star in her first year in Nebraska and the second player in most of spring. It is thought that she is the only golfer of university level or higher to compete in a hijab, the headscarf worn in respect of the Muslim religion.
Arrived in Lincoln two years ago, Ahmed felt the hesitation of his teammates coming mainly from small Midwestern towns and unaccustomed to seeing a woman in hijab. She did not feel hugged until an unfortunate but unifying event took over the campus in the middle of her first year.
A video showing a student claiming to be "the most active white nationalist in Nebraska" denigrated minorities and advocated violence. It turned out that the student was in the same class of biology class as Ahmed.
Her teammates proposed to follow her through the campus, and one who would become her best friend, Kate Smith, invited Ahmed to stay with her. She did not accept but was encouraged by the gesture.
"That," Smith said, "is when she realized how much each of us was looking after her in the team, that it was not just like," he said. you are our teammate. "No, it's" We want you to be safe, we want you to feel at home here. "
Having grown up after September 11, 2001, Ahmed, like many Muslims in the United States, is the target of verbal intimidation and abuse. She started wearing the hijab in college.
On the course, in an airport or even walking on campus, she can feel the long looks and notice the looks. She stated that she had never been physically threatened – "to my knowledge" – and that most of the insults in person had occurred prior to her arrival in Nebraska.
Much of the venom that is thrown to him now comes from social media. It has been the subject of several media profiles and each of them is creating a new wave of hateful messages. She acknowledges that she reads but does not respond to messages and that a sports psychologist from the sports department helped her to learn how to handle them.
"I have been called every racial insult in the book," she said. "It's been said explicitly that people who look like me do not play golf, we do not have the right to exist in America, you should go home." That would discourage me a little but that never deterred me I'm really stubborn, so I'm going to prove you wrong, just wait.When people think they're dragging me down, it's fueling fire in me that I will be a better golfer, I will be a better student, I will continue to climb the ladder. "
The Egyptian immigrant girl is from a close-knit family of Folsom, California, and she managed to make the cultural adjustment she should make in Nebraska.
She has been busy with loneliness and anxiety, especially her first year. She was struggling to find a support network. There is a small Muslim community on campus, but it is not immersed in it. The demands placed on athletes are enormous and they are largely separated, eating and studying in facilities separate from those used by ordinary students.
Nebraska coach Robin Krapfl was initially worried about her teammates' reaction to Ahmed. Krapfl remembered meeting his golfers and talking to them about her.
"I could say with a few looks and maybe even a comment or two that they were not 100% comfortable with that," Krapfl said. "Many of our girls come from small town communities whose ethnicity is very limited.It's just the fear of the unknown.These have never been exposed to being with anyone." One of the Muslim faith. "
Krapfl said he saw a golfer or two rolling his eyes, another shook his head. "I heard" Why would the coach bring someone like that into the team? ""
"Fortunately, when she arrived here, people could see her for who she was and the quality of person that she was," Krapfl said. "It took a while, really, you have to get to know someone, who he really is and not just what he looks like."
Smith says that she sometimes complains when she and Ahmed form a group and that the conversation turns to politics, to immigration or even to fashion, such as when a person, innocent or ignorant, told Ahmed that she would look great in a short dress or a precise hairstyle.
"She can never wear a short dress, so why would you want to represent her like that?" Smith said. "You have to respect her beliefs and the reason she does it, and I think a lot of things are related to the beauty standards of women and the fact that people do not think she can be so beautiful. when she is covered, I think it's a very beautiful girl no no matter how much skin she shows. "
For all the challenges that Ahmed had to face, there were positives. Some people have complimented her for having lived her faith as she pleases, a Muslim teenager who plays golf hijab and lives in the UK wrote to the journalist that she's inspired by her work. she and that a player from another university team approached her at an event tell her that she 's recently converted to the. Islam and that she just wanted to say hello.
"I remember crying and, wow, I'm not alone here," she says.
Ahmed said that she was naturally shy and a little uncomfortable with this attention, but she hoped that the Muslim girls who followed behind her were watching him.
"I grew up without ever seeing anyone like me," she said. "Honestly, I did not know how much I was pained, never to have seen an image of myself or anyone that looked like me in the popular American culture." C & # 39; is a big problem.
"Why are basketball and football so heavily African-American?" If I was black and I saw people who looked like me in this sport, it's probably the sport I would choose. I think it's really important when we talk about trying to do golf and other sports and other areas of American culture, how important it is to see whoever you are looks like and how it will spark the interest of others. "
Ahmed started playing golf at age 8 and his parents encouraged him to bring the sport to the highest level possible. Wearing the hijab never interfered with her playing and she never considered not wearing it on the course.
"I think that Muslim women who choose to observe or not to observe it have the right to exist in whatever space they want to be", she said, "and I would feel as if I was sending a message that the hijab does not exist in this place or it should not, and I do not feel comfortable with that . "
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