While in jiu jitsu we try to stay away from the politics it often enters the sphera. The latest to be impacted is Brown Belt Fanfavorite Amal Amjahid – a Belgian citizen with Moroccan heritage. Amal is out of the competition after her father has been denied USA entry visa in spite of having been there 6 times.
Amjahid carved out quite a name for herself internationally having won double gold at Europeans a while back and a Silver medal at Worlds 2017.
No #worlds IBJJF for me this year. We have been denied access to American territory and have not been able to embark on the flight to Los Angeles. This ban is extended to my father and coach Khalid Houry who has been with me since the beginning of this adventure when we visited more than 6 times in Los Angeles.
We do not understand this decision, especially since my father is an integrated person and has no problem with justice, on the contrary he works every day to improve society as best he can in his social investment. I would particularly like to thank US Embassy Brussels for all the efforts they have provided to solve this problem, they tried to contact Department of Homeland Security to untie this problem without result, other proposals were But unfortunately this did not allow us to go to the United States on time. Leaving without my coach is an unthinkable idea to me as long as we both are on this earth, we will continue our way together.
bjjheroes.com once refered to Amjahid as the most feared brown belt out there:
“We are on earth to accomplish great things. Give the best you have inside of you, the strongest and don’t keep anything for yourself”. This attitude towards life was instilled in Amjahid from a very young age through many different episodes. One example of this was a road trip to Morocco by bicycle planned by the family in 2006 – 3200 kilometers in 1 month – “For that I had to prepare for 2 years by going to school by bike every morning and come back every night before training jiu-jitsu (50km).” Amal was 11 years old at the time of the trip.
