Hat tip Dhimmi Watch
Followup on the Muslim convert who wanted to play basketball in a burka thingie. She is now deprogrammed.
Andrea Armstrong, the college basketball player whose desire to compete covered in Muslim clothing caused a national controversy, says she has returned to the Christian faith in which she was raised.
| "Sorry. Changed my mind. Ignore what I just said, okay?" |
In a letter to the editor of The Oregonian e-mailed Oct. 6, Armstrong wrote that loneliness and distance from her family led to her conversion to Islam. Armstrong, who attended the University of South Florida in Tampa, is from Lakeside, about 90 miles southwest of Eugene on the Oregon coast. "I know that my actions caused great controversy over the past few weeks," Armstrong wrote. "I had no idea that a decision that I thought I was making for myself would reach out so far beyond myself and affect so many."
| "I had no idea I'd look quite that stoopid!" |
Armstrong did not respond to interview requests. The letter is Armstrong's first public comment since a Sept. 15 statement that she was leaving the team. Armstrong converted to Islam in June, according to a Sept. 11 story in the St. Petersburg Times. She began wearing a head scarf, long pants and long-sleeved shirts in keeping with the religion's traditions.
| Now they'll have to kill her, 'cuz she's an apostate... |
Armstrong and USF basketball coach Jose Fernandez agreed that she would not wear traditional Muslim clothing in games, according to the Times. Yet when Armstrong, 22, returned to school in August, she told the coach she wanted to adhere to her faith, according to the Times. She showed up for team photos Aug. 30 fully covered. What happened next is in dispute.
"No, no! That ain't the way it happened!"
"Shuddup! It did so!" |
Fernandez told The Oracle newspaper of USF that Armstrong quit the team that day to pursue her faith.
| "I ain't got time for basketball! I gotta bang my head on the floor five times a day!" |
Armstrong told the Times that Fernandez said wearing long clothing would make her teammates uncomfortable and that Islam oppressed women. She also said Fernandez called her parents and told them she had joined a "cult." Armstrong told the Times that she left over the dispute about her clothing.
"If I can't have sequins, I'm leaving!"
"Well, fine then! Leave and be damned!" |
Fernandez declined the Times' request to comment and did not return a message from The Oregonian.
| "Your call is very important to me. At the tone, please leave your name and number and the date and time of your call and I'll get back to you. Eventually." |
School officials said they would seek a waiver from NCAA guidelines to accommodate her dress, and Armstrong quickly returned to the team.
| "See? See? We're caving! That's the way you can tell we're an institute of higher education!" |
Yet on Sept. 15, four days after news broke of the alleged dispute about her clothing, Armstrong issued a statement saying she had quit the team because she did not want the issue "to cause further distraction."
| "Is my Huff ready? I'm leaving!" |
Ahmed Bedier of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Armstrong had contacted for support, was quoted at the time as saying that Armstrong's real reason for leaving the team was fear.
"I'm so frightened! Oh, hold me Ahmed!"
"Back off, y'brazen hussy!" |
Bedier said that Armstrong received hate-filled e-mails denouncing Islam, and that one man waved a newspaper story while following her in a car as she drove home on a scooter.
| ... her burka waving in the wind... |
Contacted Oct. 7, Bedier said he had seen no indication that Armstrong was reconsidering her conversion to Islam. "Her only hesitation was whether she was going to play or not," said Bedier, who said he had last spoken to Armstrong two weeks earlier. After being given a copy of Armstrong's letter to the editor, Bedier did not respond to requests for comment.
| "Wotta waste of time! Oh, well! She must be killed..." |
South Florida officials said they would allow Armstrong to keep her basketball scholarship even after she left the team. But Armstrong withdrew from school Sept. 23, according to the registrar's office.
Armstrong played for North Bend High School and accepted a basketball scholarship to Kansas State, where she played for two seasons. Seeking more playing time, she transferred to South Florida in 2002 and played her only season there in 2003-04, when she was co-captain and averaged 3.4 points per game. This season would have been Armstrong's last year of eligibility.
| Now it's her first year as a laughingstock... |
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