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Famed for his slam dunks
and "skyhook", Kareem Abdul-Jabbar discovers the other side of
life, spirituality, and accepts Islam.
Acknowledged by many
players as the greatest basketball player of all time, voted six times the
National Basketball Association’s most valuable player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
is also one of the most visible Muslims in the American public arena. The 7’ 2”native upper Harlem, born
Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, starred for UCLA before entering the National
Basketball Association with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1969. Alcindor later went to the Los
Angeles Lakers. He was so dominant
in college basketball that "dunking,”at which he excelled, was
formally banned from the intercollegiate sport. As a result, Lew Alcindor developed the shot for which
he is personally the most famous-the "skyhook"-which has been
called the shot that changed basketball, and with the help of which he was
to score more than thirty eight thousand points in regular-season NBA
play. When Milwaukee won the
NBA title in 1970-71, Alcindor, who was by then Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was
the acclaimed king of basketball.
Lew Alcindor first learned
his Islam from Hammas Abdul Khaalis, a former jazz drummer .... According to his own testimony, he
had been raised to take authority seriously, whether that of nuns,
teachers, or coaches, and in that spirit he followed the teachings of Abdul
Khaalis closely. It was by him
that Alcindor was given the name Abdul Kareem, then changed to Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, literally "the noble one, servant of the Almighty.” Soon, however, he determined to
augment Abdul Khaalis’s teachings with his own study of the Quran, for which
he undertook to learn basic Arabic.
In 1973 he travelled to Libya and Saudi Arabia to get a better grasp
of the language and to learn about Islam in some of its
"home”contexts.
Abdul-Jabbar was not interested in making the kind of public
statement about his Islam that he felt Muhammad Ali had in his opposition
to the Vietnam War, wishing simply to identify himself quietly as an
African American who was also a Muslim. He stated clearly that his name Alcindor was a slave
name, literally that of the slave-dealer who had taken his family away from
West Africa to Dominica to Trinidad, from where they were brought to
America.
[…] Kareem Abdul-Jabbar affirms his identity as a Sunni
Muslim. He professes a strong
belief in what he calls the Supreme Being and is clear in his understanding
that Muhammad is his prophet and the Quran is the final revelation…
....For his part, Kareem accepts his responsibility to live
as good an Islamic life as possible, recognising that Islam is able to meet
the requirements of being a professional athlete in America.
Excerpts from His Book, Kareem
The following are excerpts
from the second book he wrote about his basketball career, Kareem,
published in 1990[1], telling his reasons for being drawn toward Islam:
[Growing up in America,] I eventually found that . . .emotionally, spiritually, I could not afford to be a
racist. As I got older, I
gradually got past believing that black was either the best or the
worst. It just was. The black man who had the most
profound influence on me was Malcolm X. I had read "Muhammad Speaks", the Black Muslim
newspaper, but even in the early sixties, their brand of racism was
unacceptable to me. It held
the identical hostility as white racism, and for all my anger and resent
meant, I understood that rage can do very little to change anything. It’s just a continual negative
spiral that feeds on itself, and who needs that?
. . .Malcolm X was different. He’d made a trip to Mecca, and
realized that Islam embraced people of all color. He was assassinated in 1965, and though I didn’t know much
about him then, his death hit hard because I knew he was talking about
black pride, about self-help and lifting ourselves up. And I liked his attitude of
non-subservience.
. . .Malcolm X’s autobiography came out
in 1966, when I was a freshman at UCLA, and I read it right before my
nineteenth birthday. It made a
bigger impression on me than any book I had ever read, turning me around
totally. I started to look at
things differently, instead of accepting the mainstream viewpoint.
. . .[Malcolm] opened the door for real
cooperation between the races, not just the superficial, paternalistic
thing. He was talking about
real people doing real things, black pride and Islam. I just grabbed on to it. And I have never looked back.
Interview with TalkAsia[2]
SG[3]: Before Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar there was Lew Alcindor.
Now Lew Alcindor was what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born as, he has
since converted to Islam.
Something that he says was a very deeply spiritual decision. Tell me a little bit about your own
personal journey, from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Is there still some of Lew Alcindor
in you today?
KA[4]: Well you know that
was who I started my life out as, I’m still my parent’s child, I’m
still...my cousins are still the same, I’m still me though. But I made a choice. (SG: Do you feel different? Is it a different feeling when you
take on a different name, a different persona?) I really don’t think...I
think it has more to do with evolution -- I evolved into Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, I don’t have any regrets about who I was but this is who I am
now.
SG: And a spiritual
journey, how important was that?
KA: Well as a spiritual
journey, I don’t think I would have been able to be as successful as I was
as an athlete if it were not for Islam. It gave me a moral anchor, it enabled me to not be
materialistic, it enabled me to see more what was important in the
world. And all of that was
reinforced by people, very important people to me: Coach John Wooden, my
parents, all reinforced those values.
And it enabled me to live my life a certain way and not get
distracted.
SG: When you embraced
Islam, was it difficult for other people to come to terms with that? Did that create a distance between
you and others?
KA: For the most part it
was. I didn’t try to make it
hard on people; I did not have a chip on my shoulder. I just wanted people understand I
was Muslim, and that’s what I felt was the best thing for me. If they could accept that I could
accept them. I didn’t...it
wasn’t like if you’re going to become my friend you have to become Muslim
also. No, that was not
it. I respect people’s choices
just as I hope they respect my choices.
SG: What happens to a
person when they take on another name, another persona if you like? How much did you change?
KA: For me it made me more
tolerant because I had to learn to understand differences. You know I was different, people
didn’t oftentimes understand exactly where I was coming from; certainly
after 9/11 I’ve had to like explain myself and...
SG: Was there a backlash
against people like yourself?
Did you feel that at all?
KA: I didn’t feel like
necessarily a backlash, but I certainly felt that a number of people might
have questioned my loyalty, or questioned where I was at, but I continue to
be a patriotic American...
SG: For a lot of black
Americans, converting to Islam was an intensely political decision as
well. Was it the same for you?
KA: That was not part of my
journey. My choosing Islam was
not a political statement; it was a spiritual statement. What I learned about the Bible and
the Qur’an made me see that the Qur’an was the next revelation from the
Supreme Being - and I chose to interpret that and follow that. I don’t think it had anything to do
with trying to pigeon hole anyone, and deny them the ability to practice as
they saw fit. The Quran tells
us that Jews, Christians, and Muslims: Muslims are supposed to treat all of
them the same way because we all believe in the same prophets and heaven
and hell would be the same for all of us. And that’s what it’s supposed to be about.
SG: And it’s been very
influential in your writing as well.
KA: Yes it has. Racial equality and just what I
experienced growing up in America as a kid really affected me to experience
the Civil Rights Movement, and see people risking their lives, being
beaten, being attacked by dogs, being fire hosed down streets, and they
still took a non-violent and very brave approach to confronting
bigotry. It was remarkable and
it certainly affected me in a very profound way.
Footnotes:
[1] Random House (Mar 24
1990). ISBN: 0394559274.
[2] Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Talkasia Transcript. Airdate July 2nd, 2005. (CNN.com)
[3] S.G.: The Host, Stan Grant
[4] KA: The Guest, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
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