DURHAM, N.C. – It remains to be seen who, if anyone, emerges as the transcendent American performer of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Only weeks away from the Opening Ceremony, we cannot yet know if there will be someone forever associated with the Rio Games the way Mark Spitz is with Munich or Michael Phelps with Beijing, the way Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are with Los Angeles, or the Dream Team with Barcelona and the Magnificent Seven with Atlanta.
But over the past few months, during the run-up to Rio, one American athlete has found the promotional spotlight more than most. She is a 30-year-old black woman from New Jersey, a 2007 Duke University graduate who competes in the relatively obscure sport of fencing.
Her name is
Ibtihaj Muhammad, daughter of a retired narcotics detective and a special education teacher, the middle of their five children. Along with being an elite athlete, she is a fashion entrepreneur who dresses modestly, smiles readily and speaks eloquently.
She is also Muslim. As one of the faces of Team USA, she will stand out distinctively among her Olympic peers when they march the stars and stripes into Maracana Stadium on Aug. 5 — because her face will be framed by a hijab, the headscarf that Muslim women traditionally wear to cover their hair, ears and neck.
And when the fencing tournament commences, Muhammad will make history by becoming the first U.S. athlete in any sport to compete in hijab at the Olympics.
Muhammad qualified for a place on the U.S. Olympic fencing roster last winter and almost immediately her world expanded to include a whirlwind of activities ancillary to her seven hours of training per day. In early March she was invited to the Team USA Media Summit at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, facing the probing queries of a horde of journalists. In late April she was closer to home in Manhattan's Times Square, where she gave First Lady Michelle Obama a public fencing lesson as part of a 100-days-to-Rio countdown celebration and photo op.
Muhammad was one of 10 prominent Muslims who met with the First Lady's husband for an hour and a half prior to his speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore — then received a shout-out from the president during his remarks. She has been profiled in traditional media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and featured in magazines from Forbes and The New Yorker to Elle and Shape. She has appeared on television programs as divergent as Today, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Entertainment Tonight. She even showed up on the cover of Scholastic News, the magazine for elementary school kids.
Perhaps most significantly, she was chosen one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2016, within the category of pioneers. The publication had earlier profiled her under the headline "A New Face For Team USA."
Muhammad has been fencing since she was 13 years old, and it is her accomplishments in sport that have brought her to this stage — setting the example that religion, race and gender need not hinder anyone from reaching their goals. She willingly shares all the details of her athletic journey, but she also is taking advantage of this unique opportunity to share her life experiences — to raise the public consciousness on issues such as prejudice and ignorance, and on concepts such as acceptance, inclusion and diversity. Topics she faces every day as a Muslim American woman.
Muhammad was invited to speak on a panel at the South by Southwest conference in Texas this past March. When she went to the registration desk to check in, a volunteer insisted she had to remove her hijab for the photo on her credential. Even after she explained that she wore it for religious reasons, the volunteer would not relent. Eventually a staff member intervened and apologized.
Muhammad recounts this and other anecdotes of the many hassles she has faced during these times of increased Islamophobia — not only with airport security delays, but just walking down the street in New York, where she was once asked by a passerby if she was going to blow up something.
That prompted one of her frequent posts on Twitter: "We're living in a time where people feel comfortable spewing their hate and harassing the innocent on our streets. We need change."
"The reason I'm so public about the experiences I've had, especially in these last few months, is that I want the public to know this is commonplace and it shouldn't be," she told reporters during the Times Square event. "We have to change our conversation. We have to be more accepting of our neighbors and try to combat the bigotry that we're experiencing now. More than anything, I want things to change."
Muhammad acknowledges that she becomes particularly bothered and frustrated with the ignorance revealed by those who assume that Muslims aren't American. When she hears people talk about sending Muslims back to their home country, she wonders where they would have her go, having been born and raised in Maplewood, N.J. "America is all that I know. I feel American down to my bones," she said.
"I think it's unfortunate that we're in this moment, especially during the presidential election, where people feel so comfortable voicing their dislike or discontent for people of a particular background or particular religion. We as Americans have to fight that because it goes against the very values that we stand for. I feel like I'm in this position and I have to use it — and I have to use it well. I want to reach as many people as I can, not just with my skills in my sport but with my voice."
It was actually Muhammad's devotion to her religion that led her to her sport. She was an extremely active and athletic youngster who participated in numerous sports, but she often felt detached from her teammates because she dressed differently — not only the hijab, but the alterations her mother would have to make to her various uniforms to keep her arms and legs covered.
Mother and daughter were stopped at a traffic light in Maplewood one day when they saw through some large windows at the local high school several kids with masks and long clothes practicing a sport they did not recognize. They found out later that it was fencing and Muhammad's mother encouraged her to give it a try. She says she was not a fan initially, but she liked the fact that the uniform did not conflict with her religious tenets, so she could dress like the rest of her teammates.
Muhammad joined a fencing club in middle school to learn the sport and eventually developed into a two-time state champion in high school. Critical to that growth was her discovery of the Peter Westbrook Foundation, a New York City club established by the 1984 Olympic bronze medalist and 13-time national champion, to work with underserved inner city youth. Westbrook and his assistant, 2000 Olympian Akhi Spencer-El, guided her career; Spencer-El has been her primary coach for years and she still trains at the club.
At Duke, Muhammad competed for coach
Alex Beguinet's top-notch program her first three years and posted superb results. Her dual match records were 49-8, 38-4 and 40-3. She capped each season by earning All-America honors at the NCAA Championships, with finishes of ninth, 11th and sixth nationally. She also picked up dual degrees in International Relations and African and African American Studies.
In the nine years since graduation, her expertise with a saber has brought much acclaim — beginning with a USA Fencing individual national championship in 2009 and including five straight team medals at Senior World Championships, 2011-15. She was on the USA's world championship team in 2014 and has been on five Pan American Games championship teams as well. At the 2016 Pan Ams this summer, she won the individual saber gold medal in the final seeding tournament before Rio.
Muhammad is not considered America's top saber fencer — that designation belongs to Mariel Zagunis, who won individual gold medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and is currently ranked No. 3 in the world. But Muhammad is ranked No. 2 right behind Zagunis in the U.S. and No. 8 in the world. When they join forces for the team competition, along with 2012 Olympian Dagmara Wozniak, they are considered prime contenders to bring home one of the team medals from Rio.
An Olympic medal obviously would stand as one of the crowning achievements of Muhammad's fencing career, but her long track record of standing up and speaking out may be considered more consequential than any medal. Long before she was an Olympian she was a traveling ambassador for the U.S. Department of State's Empowering Women and Girls Through Sport initiative. And now in her role as one of the history-making faces of Team USA, she has heard from several Muslim girls who, inspired by her example, have continued playing sports despite some of the cultural obstacles they face.
When Muhammad was growing up, there were few African Americans to emulate in the mostly white sport of fencing, and there were no Muslim American women involved in the upper echelon of any sport. In that sense, Muhammad's rise to American Olympian can be a game-changer for the next generation.
"A large part of why I'm so involved in sport has to do with the small numbers of Muslim women who do wear the hijab who are involved in sports at the elite level," she told Elle magazine. "With qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team, I wanted to further challenge that notion that Muslim girls and women don't participate in sports or aren't involved in sports at the elite level. I wanted Muslim girls to know they can be a part of Team USA."
Two years ago Muhammad launched an e-tail clothing company, Louella, which she continues to run with her siblings and which might provide some insight into future career options when competitive fencing ends. Since becoming an Olympian she has made an impression on corporate America, garnering sponsorship from Visa as a member of the credit card company's #TeamVisa Rio 2016 roster, under the platform of acceptance and inclusion. More examples of moving beyond traditional limitations associated with her combination of religion, race and gender.
"There is a limited idea of who the Muslim woman is," Muhammad said in her interview with Alana Glass of Forbes. "These images that are being pushed of who the Muslim woman is or what she looks like, it is a general image in a sense where she may wear all black. She is not African American. She is probably Arab. She is oppressed. She doesn't have a voice.
"I feel that is not the Muslim women; that is not who I am. I think that it's important for people to know and especially Americans to know that Muslims are an integral part of our society. We are no different from anyone else in terms of the things that we do. The only difference in a sense for me as a woman is that I wear hijab."
And in August, she will wear it on the fencing strip in Rio, the first American to do so in any sport at an Olympics.