High school athlete disqualified in race for wearing hijab

Kambui Bomani

Staff Writer

Noor Alexandria Abukaram competed in high school sports since 2016 wearing her sportswear hijab without an inkling of retribution.  So, it was pretty understandable that she was in shock to the notice for the first time in her high school athletics career her religious headwear would be disallowed during her cross country meet.

After her seventh cross country competition during the month of October in the heat of its season, Abukaram learned she wasn’t allowed to compete in the race with her headwrap on without special permission. The decision was made by the Ohio High School Athletic Association through the disqualification of Abukaram during a Saturday meet in October. The ruling was met with social media and national outrage by many who felt the decision was a violation of Noor’s human rights.

The debacle led to Abukaram expressing her discernment and discontent in her own Facebook post. In an interview with other media outlets, Noor spoke about feeling that the incident was aliken to a nightmare; “It was like a nightmare came true,” Abukaram said.

Tim Stried, a known spokesman for the Ohio High School Athletic Association, defended the situation as a decision designed to enforce the enlisted rules in the rule book. He spoke about other cross-country runners being given the green light to compete in “religious headwear” as long as they received a waiver allowing them to bend the associations uniform regulations.

“The official was simply enforcing this rule since a waiver had not been submitted,” Stried said to the Times.

Striden was quick to add that the association would delve into the current rule standard on religious headwear being regulated prior to races. The hope is that OHSAA can modify the rules if need be so that clothing such as religious headwear won’t require a waiver.

Abukarama attends a private Islamic School in Sylvania,Ohio, that pertains to her religious beliefs but competes athletically for the public school Northview High in the same city.

Amy Addington, a spokeswoman for the Sylvania school district spoke of being informed through her email about a competitor from the school district being disqualified because of her headscarf.

Although Noor wasn’t named, the email to Addington prefaced a student-athlete’s coach being told their player was disqualified from the competition, because of a clothing attire issue. The coach, Jerry Flowers, said that he didn’t want to distract Abukaram with the disqualification, and felt she deserved to finish and complete the race like her other teammates.

Prior to the disqualification, Noor Abukaram was a known competitor in six other cross country races while also playing track and soccer for two years at Northview High.

In all activities, she was wearing her hijab with no rulebook issue surfacing. Normally when she runs, she wears a long-sleeved shirt, long leggings and a Nike sports hijab according to the Times. Abukaram referenced that the hijab wear was the same one worn by Arabian Female Athlete Ibtihaj Muhammad in the 2016 Summer Olympics for Team USA’s National Fencing Team.

Noor’s mother, Yolanda Melendez, told the New York Times how she scoured the Ohio High School Sports Association’s rulebook on the ability to wear headwear, because she had two daughters who were student-athletes at Northview High. She was adamant enough to note that no rule was in place that barred a student from wearing a hijab and had not run into a previous problem by the Association on her daughter’s hijabs.

The situation raised question on should allowance of religious clothing during competition be a discussion that should be had. One figures that since its a person’s religious belief and that’s a constitutional right to have, this whole debacle was extremely overblown.

“They’re saying her hijab violates the association’s uniform regulation , however, her hijab is central to her spiritual identity,” said Kaelyn Conley a senior English major from Jacksonville, Fla.

“At this point, it seems that the state of Ohio just doesn’t want to submit to change and be inclusive of the various cultures that America accepted,” said Kejaun Wright, a senior electrical engineer major  from D’Iberville, Miss.