MIAMI – Joining the Miami Dolphins football team, Isa Abdul-Quddus takes pride in being one of the few practicing Muslim players in America’s National Football League.
“It’s real big with my mother, so we pray together,” Abdul-Quddus told Miami Herald on Tuesday, August 16.
Abdul-Quddus, a native of Newark, New Jersey, signed a three-year, $12.75 million deal with the Dolphins in March.
After the deal, Pro Football Focus called Abdul-Quddus the No. 1 bargain in free agency, noting he ranked 19th overall among safeties, “was particularly effective against the run” and had “positives grades in coverage and as a pass-rusher.”
Yet, his position or performance in the team is not the only reason for his reputation, as he is one of NFL’s few practicing Muslims.
Being a practicing Muslim, he is open about his opposition to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has proposed banning Muslims from entering the United States.
“I hope people are smart enough to not elect that man,” he said Tuesday about Trump.
“He says a lot of ridiculous things. I can only imagine what he’ll do in office.”
Regarding Trump’s suggested ban on Muslins from entering the country, Abdul-Quddus said: “I don’t even get offended anymore because it’s like every day, he says something ridiculous. You can’t even take him serious anymore. I chalk it up to him trying to get press, trying to get his name in the newspaper.”
He also blamed terrorist attacks for creating an anti-Muslim bias among some Americans.
“It’s giving it a bad name, because that’s the only way Muslims get into the news anymore,” he told the Detroit Free Press last December.
“Like, you don’t really see anything positive. It’s only negative. So now [some] people think evil is correlated with being Muslim, and that’s messed up. The majority of the religion — 99.99 percent — aren’t that. But that 0.01 is what ruins it for all of us.
“I just think people need to be a little more open-minded about [generalizing about Muslims], because if a Christian came and killed thousands of people, they wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, I hate Christianity and we need to kill all Christians.’ I think we really need [to avoid] specifying this group of people as being evil, and just see that evil is evil, and it’s not about religion.”