Sentiment stirs against the Muslim player who wanted to wear long pants and a scarf on the basketball court.
By RON MATUS
Published September 17, 2004
Since she quit USF's basketball team last week, the controversy surrounding Andrea Armstrong has drawn mention on shows on ESPN and HBO, and even on Arab television station Al-Jazeera.
People in Chicago don't often think about the University of South Florida, and especially not about its women's basketball team.
But when Chicago radio personality Mike North learned that Andrea Armstrong - a USF basketball player, Oregon native and Muslim convert - wanted to wear religious clothing during games, he snorted, "Go back to your homeland."
"Why don't people follow (the) rules?" he continued, according to the Chicago Tribune. "At the airport they check an 85-year-old woman with a walker. But they don't make Arab people take off their turbans to see if there's a miniature rocket-launcher underneath."
In the aftermath of 9/11, it doesn't take much to stir up hostile feelings toward Muslims in the United States.
Since she quit the team last week, the story of the 22-year-old Armstrong has gone global. It has circulated in scores of newspapers across the United States and as far away as Australia. ESPN and HBO have called. Even commentators on the Arab television network Al-Jazeera reportedly discussed it.
Armstrong told the St. Petersburg Times that USF coach Jose Fernandez forced her to quit when he objected to her request to wear long pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a Muslim head scarf at games, to comply with Muslim codes requiring a woman's skin be covered.
USF later welcomed Armstrong back, but on Wednesday, after cold shoulders from people on campus and even colder e-mails from strangers, the former team captain quit again.
More than 100 people, many of them fellow Muslims, have sent notes of support to the Tampa office of the Council on American Islamic Relations, which has backed Armstrong's cause.
But in other forums, non-Muslim critics are fuming.
"Don't you know what today is? Today's September 11," said one man who left a message at the Times on Saturday. "When the hell are you guys going to get it? This is America we live in."
About 30 people posted comments on Free Republic, which bills itself as an online meeting place for conservatives.
"I wouldn't mind the dress code," wrote one respondent, "if they would only quit blowing people up."
"This jerk is not an immigrant . . . this is a home grown "convert' to Islam," wrote another. "Further evidence that Islam is most attractive to the loser/lunatic fringe."
Armstrong said in a letter to USF that she quit because she feared the clothing issue "is dividing my team, school and community." She has not returned calls for comment.
But concerns about personal safety also played a role, said CAIR spokesman Ahmed Bedier.
Besides a stream of nasty e-mails, Bedier said Armstrong told him a man waving a copy of Saturday's story followed her in a car while she sped home on her scooter.
"That creeped her out," Bedier said.
Experts on Islam are not surprised that a request to get an exemption for a college uniform could degenerate into hate-filled diatribes.
Since 9/11, Muslims and terrorists are one and the same in many American minds, said Leonardo Villalon, a University of Florida professor whose specialty is Islam in West Africa.
"There's this sense," he said, "that Islam is some sort of monolith."
Efforts to link Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, despite a lack of evidence, has furthered the perception, Villalon said.
In Armstrong's case, the fact that USF is involved might make people more prone to hard feelings. Critics have accused the USF administration of coddling Sami Al-Arian, a former professor indicted on terrorism charges.
But charges that all Muslims are terrorists can flare up anywhere.
In Brooksville this week, the pastor of a Baptist church accused two members of the Hernando County Commission of supporting terrorism because they attended an educational event sponsored by a Muslim group. When the commissioners tried to respond, church members chanted, "terrorists, terrorists."
Armstrong is hoping the story blows over, Bedier said, but chances are it will garner more publicity now that she has quit.
On Wednesday, the ESPN program Outside the Lines called CAIR, Bedier said. On Thursday, it was ESPN's Cold Pizza and HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
It's not the clothing angle that's creating the buzz, he said.
