Career
Other runners who have made the same switch include Saif Saeed Shaheen. He represented Qatar over 10,000 metres at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and three times at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics. Abdullah has competed numerous times at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships.
He made his first appearance as a junior athlete at the 1999 race, finishing in fifth place.
In the senior section, he was sixth in the 2001 short race and 2002 long race, before missing 2003 amid his switch to represent Qatar. He returned in 2004 to take fourth in the short race.
In 2005 he race in both races and was the long race bronze medallist and eighth in the short race. He performed less well after that, with finishes ranging from eighth to 18th in the period from 2006 to 2010.
He has enjoyed success at the Asian Cross Country Championships, winning the individual and team gold medals at the 2007 and 2009 competitions.
On the track Abdullah has typically competed in the 10,000 m. He holds the Asian and Qatari records for the distance with his personal best of 26:38.76 minutes, set at the Memorial Van Damme meeting in 2003. He was the bronze medallist in the event at the 2001 Goodwill Games, In his first outings as a Qatari athlete he came fourth in the 10,000 m at the 2003 World Championships in Athletics, before taking the regional title in the event at the 2003 Asian Athletics Championships.
He ran at the 2007 World Championships in Athletics, but did not manage to finish.
On his Olympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Olympics he came eighth in the 10,000 m and was the only runner in the top ten to represent a non-African nation. He was eleventh at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, then was only a bronze medallist at the 2009 Asian Athletics Championships, as he was beaten by two other former Kenyans, Nicholas Kemboi and Hasan Mahboob.
At the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships he has competed three times and reached the podium twice. He was third in 2004, 24th in 2007 and took a second bronze medal at the 2008 race.
After a break from international competition lasting from late 2010 through 2011, Abdullah made his marathon debut in 2012 at the Hamburg Marathon and finished the race in a time of 2:08:36 hours, coming fifth overall.