If you visit this website often, there is a good chance that a significant portion of your life revolves around basketball. But these are times when we must remember that there are more important issues in the world that deserve our nearly undivided attention.
Sometimes, those issues and basketball merge together. Such is the case following Friday’s executive order by Donald Trump banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from visiting the United States even with visas or Green Cards.
This has been a rightfully well-discussed topic on news and social media in the hours following the action. One notable person to discuss it is Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the Brooklyn Nets forward who is one of several Muslims playing in the NBA. (Note: Luol Deng and Thon Maker could potentially be directly affected by the ban. They were born in current-day South Sudan, which is not on the list of banned countries, but it’s a difficult situation to know details of due to the breaking apart of the country in 2011).
Hollis-Jefferson spoke to Brian Lewis of the New York Post in an evidently emotional exchange. The whole piece is worth your time and I encourage you to read it, but we are sharing some excerpts from Rondae’s words for broader knowledge.
“We try to teach people not to point the finger, blame a whole [group]. You can’t judge a whole group by one’s actions at the end of the day. And I feel like that’s not right. That’s definitely not right,’’ Hollis-Jefferson said Saturday before they faced the Timberwolves. “You can’t speak for all Muslims, because all Muslims’ hearts aren’t like that. Most of them are pure, really believe in a different way and a different livelihood.”
“This is kind of hard. My bad. This is kind of touching … just being a part of that community and a part of that family,’’ Hollis-Jefferson said. “I feel like this should definitely be handled differently, and I feel like more people should definitely speak up and act on it just because it’s BS at the end of the day.”
“I kind of feel like things could be handled differently. Me being Muslim, me knowing a lot of Muslims, it’s definitely, definitely heartbreaking to see,’’ said Hollis-Jefferson, who was born in Pennsylvania. “A lot of my college friends are Muslims, and their families are in some of those countries. Just seeing that, my heart goes out to them, how they feel about it and everything. It’s definitely a tough situation to put people in.”
