Muslim Student Association

Colorado State University

Muslims in Sports

compiled by Yusuf Siddiqui and Jihan Moharram

last updated in March 1995

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of this country's legendary basketball players, was bor n Lewis Alcindor in New York City to parents of West Indian heritage. He starte d playing basketball in elementary school, going on to play for UCLA during his college years. He was a member of three consecutive NCAA championship teams, 1967, 1968 and 1969, and was named Most Outstanding Player for each of those years, the only college player in the history of the Final Four to have received this award three times. Abdul-Jabbar's professional career began with Milwaukee before he joined the L.A. Lakers in 1975. During his professional career, he was a member of six NBA world-championship teams, named Most Valuable Player six times (again, the only player in the NBA's history to be awarded this honor six times), and he holds the NBA record for the greatest number of seasons played (twenty). Abdul-Jabbar is now retired from professional basketball and lives in Hawaii. He is known among his friends for his love of reading, travel and jazz. The following are excerpts from the second book he wrote about his basketball career, Kareem, published in 1989, 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 ment, 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.

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf

Mahmoud was born Chris Jackson, the son of a white man and a black hospital cafeteria worker, Jacqueline Jackson. Young Chris, who never knew his father, grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi. During his years at Gulfport High, Mahmoud was honored two consecutive times as Mississippi Player of the Year.

Mahmoud excels as a point guard/shooting guard. As a freshman at Louisiana State (LSU), Chris was nothing less than amazing, setting a NCAA freshman record of 55 points in his fifth game against Florida.

During his elementary school years Chris started having symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome, although he was not put on medication until 1987. This ailment makes him a perfectionist, so that he often spends several minutes on routine activities. Like a ritual, he cannot leave the basketball court until he sinks several shots and they all go in perfectly. It is precisely because of this odd behavior that he became valued as one of the most accurate shooters in basketball. At the same time, he has suffered a good deal due to his involuntary outbursts because of people's incorrect assumptions. About his affliction he says:

I bless Allah for everything. I think Tourette's syndrome is a blessing because it enabled me to be a perfectionist. I didn't always think it was a blessing. When I was younger, I used to wonder what was wrong. It got so bad I just couldn't stop it, no matter how hard I tried. I'd finally just lie in bed and cry.

Eventually Mahmoud was drafted by the Denver Nuggets. During his first two years, he played terribly for a variety of reasons. However, during the third year (1992-93) he turned around and was voted the NBA's Most Improved Player. He had the NBA's best free-throw percentage in the 1993-94 season, and in fact he once almost broke the record. He is currently playing shooting guard/point guard and is the Nuggets' highest scorer.

Deeply religious since he was young, Chris embraced Islam during his second year with the Nuggets (1991) and subsequently changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Islam has given him more maturity and a new perspective on life:

I used to let basketball affect my day . . . . That can't happen no more. I play for Allah. . . . My strength comes from Allah. I have more strength than I ever had, and it's an inner strength.

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf's NBA statistics

Hakeem Olajuwon

Born a Muslim in Nigeria, Hakeem's last name means "being on top." Hakeem speaks six different languages. For the first fifteen years of his life, Hakeem didn't play basketball. Initially, he made it to the NCAA Final Four three times with the University of Houston. Later he joined the NBA as Akeem Abdul-Olajuwon, the number one draft choice in 1985. He played on the NBA All-Star game eight times and was named to the all-NBA first team four times. He reached the NBA Finals in his second season, only to lose.

Hakeem is one of the only two centers in the history of the NBA to be named to the All-NBA first team and All-Defensive first team in three different seasons (the other was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). He played a large part in the Houston Rockets' winning the NBA championship in 1994. In the same year, Hakeem was awarded the league's Most Valuable Player and the NBA Finals award, an accomplishment shared only by Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Willis Reed. With his characteristic unselfishness, he called his teammates onto the floor to accept the MVP award with him. He is now thirty-one years old and into his tenth year in the NBA. He says:

People seem to think that if you are getting paid to play, then that makes you a professional. But I think you're only a true professional if you carry yourself right at all times -- off the floor, on the floor, every night and in every game.

A devout Muslim, Hakeem's faith comes first. His words show his Islamic philosophy:

When we lost the NCAA and NBA finals, [I did not dwell on the disappointment]. Because I knew I did my best. If it was meant to be, then it would have happened. . . . When things don't go as well as expected, it's part of fate. Everything is a test. . . . That's the beautiful thing about Islam -- that now you have patience, you have better understanding, and you avoid things like that [temptations of the American society]. So you play more freely, you enjoy the game more, and you put everything in perspective.

More about Hakeem Olajuwon's sports career, courtesy of Cameron Payne

Pictures of the Houston Rockets, again courtesy of Mr. Payne

Muhammad Ali

Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942, Muhammad Ali won the Golden Gloves and Olympic Championships in 1960. He defeated the heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964. The only person to win the heavyweight championship three times (1964, 1974, and 1978), Ali retired in 1981 with a 55-5 record.

Ali joined the Nation of Islam in 1964 and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Two years later divorced his wife Sonji. In 1967 he married Belinda. Ali was sentenced to jail, and his WBA boxing licence and N.Y. boxing licence were rescinded in 1965 and 1967-70, respectively, because he refused to join the Army during the Vietnam War, but the sentence was rescinded by the U.S. Supreme Court after appeals in 1970. Concerning him, Gary Smith wrote:

To give oneself over to Frazier's greatness -- or to that of Mays or Namath or any of the other great ones -- yes, that was a gratifying way to spend an evening or an afternoon. But it was a walk into a closed room, a drive into a cul-de-sac. Ali was a doorway, an opening into something beyond. He spoke of God before his fights, he spoke of man, he spoke of hungry children, he cared about the sick and the old, he raised the game to drama. And because he stood for something greater, the people who climbed upon their chairs for him felt it. They stood for something greater, too.

-- Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated, Nov. 15, 1989

For a number of years Ali has had Parkinson's Syndrome, which causes a loss in short-term memory. He has problems opening car doors, for example, sometimes taking several minutes. However, he is extremely patient with the disease and simply accepts it as what has to be. Concerning his health, he says:

What if I was still superhuman [sic!]? What if I had finished undefeated? What if I had won my last two fights. . . if I didn't have this health problem? I'd still be talkin' like I used to. . . . Be tryin' to keep up with my image. Still doin' all those interviews and commercials and speeches. . . . I'd probably have a miserable life. . . . I wouldn't be human.

Now an orthodox Muslim, Ali has founded the Muhammad Ali Islamic Foundation, a publishing house for Islamic books.

Rashaan Salaam

Rashaan was born to two Muslim parents. He excelled as running back for the University of Colorado. In the 1994 season, Rashaan won the Heisman Trophy, the most prestigious award in college football. Even though only a junior, he plans to go on to the National Football League.