Muslim girls around Chicago are playing sports and celebrating their faith while doing it

On a frigid Sunday at a gym in Naperville, a group of teenage girls doing basketball drills practices dribbling.

“Lower, lower,” Aminah Chaudhary shouts over the bouncing balls, showing them how to sink into a squat.

After a water break, most of the girls put on their hoodies, form a line at the center of the court, get down on their knees and begin to pray. Chaudhary joins them.

It’s a sign of a major shift among Muslim girls in the Chicago area. Muslim community leaders say participation in youth sports like basketball is on the rise and that these girls are playing while celebrating their Muslim identity, not hiding it.

In 2021, an Illinois law took effect allowing students to wear hijabs, leggings and long sleeves without having to request a waiver from their school district. Muslim Civic Coalition president Dilara Sayeed, whose group helped draft the law, says it's given them the chance “to play in uniforms that meet their faith traditions and not have to constantly be seeking approval to do it.”

Around that time, a number of basketball leagues in the suburbs aimed at Muslim girls sprang up.

Chaudhary started iDrive Faith + Athletics in Woodridge in 2021 to teach basetball to young Muslim girls, recruiting players from her mosque.

Before the new law, Chaudhary says, Muslim girls often were scrutinized for the clothing they chose to wear to uphold the traditions of their Islamic faith.

She says that, when she was coaching girls basketball at a suburban Islamic high school a decade ago, the referees occasionally inspected the hijabs some of her players wore.

“I think because it’s something that’s different to people, sometimes they don’t know how to respond to it,” Chaudhary says. “If you do that to a young girl in high school, that can quickly turn them away from ever feeling comfortable enough to even show up.”

Chaudhary fell in love with basketball early, watching Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman lead the Bulls to championships in the 1990s. She dreamed about wanting to become the first girl to play alongside her idols in the NBA.

As a teenager, Chaudhary wore the same uniform as her basketball teammates in Lombard.

“The generation where I grew up in … a lot of Muslim girls just went [uncovered] … or they avoided the confrontation of trying to look different,” she says. “I never even saw anyone on other teams that was covered.”

In college, Chaudhary met several Muslim women who were into basketball. Unlike her, some of them didn’t feel comfortable playing with men. So the women started playing together. As Chaudhary got to know them, she learned that many of them had never had a coach.

“I saw just glimpses of how good they could be if they would have been coached,” Chaudhary says. “And, when I would play with some of my friends, I would train them.”

That’s where Chaudhary’s coaching career began. And that’s why she was in the gym in Naperville, pushing players to run sprints and trying to teach them the skills and give them the experience that her college friends missed out on.

Shamsa Jafri, who was sitting in the bleachers, watching her two daughters train with Chaudhary., says that, wen she was their age, “It wasn’t even heard of in sports to be able to wear clothing that would align with our religion.”

When Nooreen Makda, 14, started playing basketball in a northwest suburban park district league three years ago, she faced awkward questions about her modest clothing choices and the traditions she followed to practice her faith. Teammates asked why she wore leggings and whether she felt hot playing in an undershirt. When she fasted, they said things like, “I commend you because I would totally cheat.”

Junaid Makda, her father, says he heard similar stories from the parents of other young Muslim girls who played basketball in the northwest suburbs.

“Our daughters were being discriminated against,” Makda says. “They were being made fun of because of the clothes that they were wearing. They didn’t feel comfortable in their own skin.”

Some of their girls lost interest in sports altogether, including his oldest daughter. So Makda gathered a few parents and asked, “Why don’t we start a league for our girls in our mosque and give them a safe space where they can continue to play basketball without dealing with the struggles?”

That’s how their league, Muslimah Ballerz, was born in Morton Grove in 2022. That year, more than 70 girls signed up. They practiced on Sundays at the mosque’s gym. Makda and some of the other dads volunteered to coach.

With all three of his daughters playing in the league, Makda often coached one of them playing against another.

“I remember the first weekend of the league, the parking lot was completely full,” he says. “The gym was standing-room only. The amount of hype and energy and excitement that was there was amazing.”

The enthusiasm Makda saw for Muslimah Ballerz has spread, with parents and coaches starting similar leagues through their mosques in other suburbs. The people behind these efforts say these leagues are paving the way for a generation of Muslim girls to play sports, encouraging them to try out for school teams despite the prejudice they might have faced.

Sanaa Makda, Nooreen’s mother, is proud of the surge of interest in sports in her community and the role her family has played in that. Of the girls who started in the Muslimah Ballerz league, she says at least a dozen now play on their high school teams, a marked difference from when she was young.

She says she attended a private Islamic school, where she was allowed to cover up for gym, but that, when she moved to a public high school, none of the girls dressed like her.

“I asked the coach, ‘Can I wear sweatpants?’ ” she says. “I didn’t know about compression leggings or anything at that time. He said, ‘No, you have to wear shorts.’ I didn’t even ask twice.”

Sanaa Makda says she tears up sometimes when she sees how confidently Nooreen carries herself as a freshman starting for her high school’s junior varsity team “because you don’t see girls go that far.”

Nooreen says that some of her high school teammates at first asked about her clothing or religious practices but that, after playing with Muslimah Ballerz, she felt confident explaining that she chooses to cover up to practice modesty and that they supported her.

She looks up to Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir — a Muslim American basketball player who couldn’t pursue her dream of playing professionally because of a rule prohibiting hijab on the court. Abdul-Qaadir challenged the rule, and the International Basketball Federation, ultimately overturned it.

“She really promotes playing with hijab,” Nooreen says of Abdul-Qaadir. “I’m not ready for that yet, but it’s something I aspire to be able to do.”