Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir doesn't have much time to hoop anymore.
The 34-year-old from Springfield, Mass., is a mother of three children (and pregnant with a fourth). She flies all over the country and sometimes abroad for speaking engagements. And in Memphis, she's overseeing the support system for the city's fast-growing community of Muslim female athletes.
But during an overnight sports retreat in mid-July, both young girls and their moms begged for Abdul-Qaadir to break out her bag. She laughs and calls herself washed today, but Abdul-Qaadir still wowed the crowd with glimpses of what made her Massachusetts' only 3,000-point scorer (boys or girls) ever.
"It's weird because I'm not as good as I was," she said. "I'm slower, I'm also pregnant, I don't play as often, but it's like riding a bike. And so it's funny to see them think that I'm just so amazing when I'm like, 10 times slower than what I used to be."
MORE HOOP QUEENS: Jennifer Rizzotti | Nadine Domond
Abdul-Qaadir's 3,070 career points still stand as the state's all-time record since she graduated in 2009. She went on to play Division 1 at Memphis and Indiana State, scoring 1,108 career points after tearing her ACL as a freshman. But Abdul-Qaadir's star rise quickly became less about her on-court prowess and more about her steadfast commitment to her faith.
In 2009, she joined President Barack Obama for an iftar dinner at the White House. She became the first woman to play Div. 1 while wearing hijab, and when she could not compete overseas because of a FIBA ban on head coverings during games, Abdul-Qaadir fought for years to overturn the rule at the expense of her own pro career. Her battle to play has been the subject of numerous features and the 2019 documentary, "Life Without Basketball."
Abdul-Qaadir often felt isolated while being thrust into the spotlight. Now, she's found a calling in showing other Muslim hoopers they're not alone.
"Honestly, it's a dream come true. I never thought how important this space would be for me, even now as an adult," she said. "When I was playing, it was only me, and I think I got accustomed to that, and I thought this was normal. And I didn't realize how important it was to be able to connect to people who look like me, or people who believe what I believe, and have a support system."
Abdul-Qaadir grew up in Springfield, Mass., and attended New Leadership Charter, a school that no longer exists and was located in a trailer behind nearby Pioneer Valley Christian when she first enrolled. The home gym that sparked Abdul-Qaadir's record-breaking high school career was the Rebecca M. Johnson elementary school. Her attire helped her stand out quickly, for better and worse. Abdul-Qaadir was instantly recognizable at AAU tournaments and camps, which she says kept the attention of college coaches that would recruit her down the line.
It also sparked discrimination. Her most vivid memory was during a game against Holyoke Catholic (which has since merged to become Pope Francis) as a sophomore. Abdul-Qaadir was inbounding the ball when a fan shouted that she looked like the niece of Osama Bin Laden.
"It just sucked, because clearly I'm here just to play basketball, and these are the thoughts that are not probably only running through your mind, but everyone else's mind," she said.
That didn't stop Abdul-Qaadir from putting together the most dominant individual career in state history. The 5-foot-4 point guard averaged 42 points per game as a senior on her tiny New Leadership team. She scored 38 points of her team's 51 points at the Hoophall Classic in front of Geno Auriemma and Rebecca Lobo — and would break Lobo's all-time scoring mark the next game.
"Springfield was a small community, but basketball was our love, and basketball was a way out for most of the inner-city kids," Abdul-Qaadir said. "But there was love and a lot of our coaches know that they wanted for us what they didn't get to have."
Abdul Quaadir's father Tariq was incarcerated when she first rose to superstardom. He learned about her first dominant high school games because a guard brought him a newspaper clipping and asked if they were related. Tariq would watch her highlights on the news while he was in prison. Abdul-Qaadir wanted to keep shining so her father could see her play; Tariq was motivated by her success, and aided by his faith, to put his problems with drugs and past life choices behind him.
"Bilqis was inspired, but I was more inspired," he said. "I was in a place where (I thought), 'OK, I gotta pay my dues, but I promise when I get out, I'm gonna do something better."
Abdul-Qaadir drew interest from several big-time colleges, including Alabama, Boston College, and Louisville. Memphis stood out during recruiting because the school tailored their pitch to address her Muslim faith, highlighting nearby mosques, halal spots on campus and the professors who taught Arabic.
But the 2010s would dramatically alter her career trajectory. Abdul-Qaadir tore her ACL and redshirted her first year at Memphis. She played three more seasons with the Tigers, working up to average 10.6 points, 2.5 assists and 2.2 steals as a senior, but struggled to mesh with the coaching staff (head coach Melissa McFerrin would come under fire in 2019 after nine players came forward with abuse allegations). Then Abdul-Qaadir transferred to Indiana State for a fifth year, posting 14.2 points and 4.4 assists per game.
Abdul-Qaadir planned to play professionally overseas — and then learned FIBA prohibited hijab and similar head coverings during games. The organization first claimed this was to keep competition "religiously neutral," and then pivoted to calling it a safety hazard.
In what has become the defining choice of her public life, Abdul-Qaadir refused to conform to the rule. Her three-year fight thrust Abdul-Qaadir into the spotlight and led to FIBA overturning the ban in 2017. "Life Without Basketball" reveals the emotional toll of the struggle in detail and is free to watch on YouTube. (Writer's note: I cannot recommend this documentary enough. It covers Abdul-Qaadir's battle against FIBA and the importance of Islam to her family much better than I could here.)
Near the end of the documentary, Abdul-Qaadir finally suited up for her first professional experience in a Dubai tournament. She played on a Somali team (because the woman running it thought she was Somali) and didn't know what to expect, but the tournament ended up being filled with former Division 1 athletes and even some offseason WNBA talent like Karima Christmas. Abdul-Qaadir's team was inexperienced — her husband, A.W., coached and taught most of the players how to defend — but she scored 38 points in her first game back.
"It was fun while it lasted, and I think it was good for me, because I was able to kind of close the chapter and see that I could have been good enough to play on that level, with WNBA players or international pro players," she said.
Abdul-Qaadir received interest from pro teams, but between all of the elapsed time and her knee issues, she wasn't ready for a full career. She instead turned to Muslim Girls Hoop Too, an organization she had founded in 2015 that runs sports clinics and camps for Muslim girls. The mid-July Ballin' In Faith overnight retreat (which also includes volleyball) has grown three times its size in three years to more than 90 participants.
"I love this for the girls who get to participate in this," she said. "We get to pray together. We get to share stories that are relatable. We all have on hijab (and) most of them are wearing long pants and long sleeves, so you're not just a complete standout. Everybody's kind of on the same page."
Abdul-Qaadir's mother, Alooah, was at the Ballin' In Faith retreat and watched her daughter flex her skills to the audience of campers. It took Alooah back to the college days, when she and Tariq would travel through snowstorms for hours to attend Abdul-Qaadir's Memphis games.
Now she marvels at her daughter's poise on stage. Abdul-Qaadir more than 34,000 Instagram followers, has written a children's book and has met with President Obama a second time (in 2015). She has spoken at major conferences and been a public face for Muslim women in sport for several years.
"I am in awe that she could get up and talk in front of other people, because me, I would be so nervous that you probably couldn't hear me, or I'd be in tears or whatever," Alooah said. "So my mind is blown at what she does. Every time we go someplace, for me, it's like I'm watching the documentary for the first time. I cry every time – so many times, it's crazy."
To an outsider, Abdul-Qaadir's commitment to her Muslim faith might look like a sacrifice. Her hijab has drawn local and national attention since childhood, and fighting to express her faith cost her valuable years as a pro.
But Abdul-Qaadir knows a better perspective. When life threatened her basketball identity, through pressure, injuries and her fight against FIBA, she learned that she was at her core a Muslim woman. Abdul-Qaadir still calls herself an athlete, but her foundation as a Muslim woman has allowed her to move past playing aspirations and into her new chapter as a leader.
"When you're talking about this part in our lives where you have to separate from being an athlete — when you don't have any other piece of yourself, it's actually harder to let go," she said. "And so I'm thankful for my faith, because we do believe that there's more to life than just the worldly stuff: the jobs, the money, the cars and nice homes. So you have purpose outside of what we're given here.
"And when I even talk to athletes now, I'm like, 'Do you have to have an anchor?' And this is to non-Muslim athletes — you have to have an anchor, and that anchor is going to settle you when you feel like you've lost everything. Whether that's God (or a) higher power, just something to keep you grounded, I think that's what saved me when I had to choose. I knew that I had a part of me that actually helped me ease the hard parts of my life."
