RALEIGH
If not Abdul-Malik Abu, then who? Who would stand up for them? Who would speak for them? Who would tell the world that the three young students gunned down in Chapel Hill were not terrorists or extremists or any other demonization of Islam, but kids like Abu, good kids trying to do good, who happened to be Muslim?
Who better to do it than a basketball star on a basketball-crazed campus who knew the victims, shared their religion, grieved their loss?
This was the obligation Abu embraced a year ago, when he learned that his friend Deah Barakat had been shot dead in his apartment along with his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister, Razah Mohammed Abu-Salha.