賈霸從伊斯蘭得到歸屬感
I was born Lew Alcindor. Now I’m
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The transition from Lew to Kareem was
not merely a change in celebrity brand name — like Sean Combs to Puff Daddy to
Diddy to P. Diddy — but a transformation of heart, mind and soul. I used to be
Lew Alcindor, the pale reflection of what white America expected of me. Now I’m Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the manifestation of my African
history, culture and beliefs.
For most people, converting from one
religion to another is a private matter requiring intense scrutiny of one’s
conscience. But when you’re famous, it becomes a public spectacle for one and
all to debate. And when you convert to an unfamiliar
or unpopular religion, it invites criticism of one’s intelligence, patriotism
and sanity. I should know. Even though I became a Muslim more than 40 years
ago, I’m still defending that choice.
Unease with celebrity
I was introduced to Islam while I was
a freshman at UCLA. Although I had already achieved a certain degree of
national fame as a basketball player, I tried hard to keep my personal life
private. Celebrity made me nervous and uncomfortable. I was still young, so I
couldn’t really articulate why I felt so shy of the spotlight. Over the next
few years, I started to understand it better.
Part of my restraint was the feeling
that the person the public was celebrating wasn’t the real me. Not only did I
have the usual teenage angst of becoming a man, but I was also playing for one
of the best college basketball teams in the country and trying to maintain my studies.
Add to that the weight of being black in America in 1966 and ’67, when James
Meredith was ambushed while marching through Mississippi, the Black Panther
Party was founded, Thurgood Marshall was appointed as the first
African-American Supreme Court Justice and a race riot in Detroit left 43 dead,
1,189 injured and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed.
I came to realize that the Lew
Alcindor everyone was cheering wasn’t really the person they imagined. They
wanted me to be the clean-cut example of racial equality. The poster boy for
how anybody from any background — regardless of race, religion or economic
standing — could achieve the American dream. To them, I was the living proof
that racism was a myth.
I knew better. Being 7-foot-2 and
athletic got me there, not a level playing field of equal opportunity. But I
was also fighting a strict upbringing of trying to please those in authority.
My father was a cop with a set of rules, I attended a Catholic school with
priests and nuns with more rules, and I played basketball for coaches who had
even more rules. Rebellion was not an option.
Still, I was discontented. Growing up in the 1960s, I wasn’t exposed to many black role models. I admired Martin Luther King Jr. for his selfless courage and
Shaft for kicking ass and getting the girl. Otherwise, the white public’s
consensus seemed to be that blacks weren’t much good. They were either needy
downtrodden folks who required white people’s help to get the rights they were
due or radical troublemakers wanting to take away white homes and jobs and
daughters. The “good ones” were happy entertainers,
either in show business or sports, who were expected
to show gratitude for their good fortune. I knew this reality was somehow wrong
— that something had to change. I just didn’t know what it meant for me.
Much of my early awakening came from reading “The Autobiography of
Malcolm X” as a freshman. I was riveted by
Malcolm’s story of how he came to realize that he was the victim of
institutional racism that had imprisoned him long before he landed in an actual
prison. That’s exactly how I felt: imprisoned by an image of who I was supposed
to be. The first thing he did was push aside the Baptist religion that his
parents had brought him up in and study Islam. To him, Christianity was a foundation of the white culture
responsible for enslaving blacks and supporting the racism that permeated
society. His family was attacked by the
Christianity-spouting Ku Klux Klan, and his home was burned by the KKK splinter
group the Black Legion.
Malcolm X’s transformation from petty
criminal to political leader inspired me to look more closely at my upbringing
and forced me to think more deeply about my identity. Islam helped him find his true self and gave him the strength
not only to face hostility from both blacks and whites but also to fight for
social justice. I began to study the Quran.
Conviction and defiance
This decision set me on an
irreversible course to spiritual fulfillment. But it definitely wasn’t a smooth
course. I made serious mistakes along the way. Then again, maybe the path isn’t
supposed to be smooth; maybe it’s supposed to be filled with obstacles and
detours and false discoveries in order to challenge and hone one’s beliefs. As
Malcolm X said, “I guess a man’s entitled to make a fool of himself if he’s
ready to pay the cost.”
I paid the cost.
As I said earlier, I was brought up
to respect rules — and especially those who enforced the rules, such as
teachers, preachers and coaches. I’d always been an exceptional student, so
when I wanted to know more about Islam, I found a teacher in Hammas
Abdul-Khaalis. During my years playing with the Milwaukee Bucks, Hammas’
version of Islam was a joyous revelation. Then in 1971, when I was 24, I
converted to Islam and became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (meaning “the noble one,
servant of the Almighty”).
The question I’m often asked is why I
had to pick a religion so foreign to American culture and a name that was hard
for people to pronounce. Some fans took it very personally, as if I had
firebombed their church while tearing up an American flag. Actually, I was rejecting the religion that was foreign to my American
culture and embracing one that was part of my black African heritage. (An
estimated 15 to 30 percent of slaves brought from Africa were Muslims.) Fans thought I joined the Nation of Islam, an American Islamic
movement founded in Detroit in 1930. Although I was greatly influenced by
Malcolm X, a leader in the Nation of Islam, I chose not to join because I
wanted to focus more on the spiritual rather than political aspects.
Eventually, Malcolm rejected the group right before three of its members
assassinated him.
My parents were not pleased by my
conversion. Though they weren’t strict Catholics, they had raised me to believe
in Christianity as the gospel. But the more I studied
history, the more disillusioned I became with the role of Christianity in
subjugating my people. I knew, of course,
that the Second Vatican Council in 1965 declared slavery an “infamy” that
dishonored God and was a poison to society. But for me, it was too little, too
late. The failure of the church to use its might and influence to stop slavery
and instead to justify it as somehow connected to original sin made me angry.
Papal bulls (e.g., “Dum Diversas” and “Romanus Pontifex”) condoned enslaving
native people and stealing their lands.
And while I realize that many
Christians risked their lives and families to fight slavery and that it would
not have been ended without them, I found it hard to align myself with the
cultural institutions that had turned a blind eye to such outrageous behavior
in direct violation of their most sacred beliefs.
The adoption of a new name was an
extension of my rejection of all things in my life that related to the
enslavement of my family and people. Alcindor was a French planter in the West
Indies who owned my ancestors. My forebears were
Yoruba people, from present day Nigeria. Keeping the name of my family’s slave master seemed somehow to
dishonor them. His name felt like a branded scar of shame.
My devotion to Islam was absolute. I
even agreed to marry a woman whom Hammas suggested for me, despite my strong
feelings for another woman. Ever the team player, I did as “Coach” Hammas
recommended. I also followed his advice not to invite my parents to the wedding
— a mistake that took me more than a decade to rectify. Although I had my
doubts about some of Hammas’ instruction, I rationalized them away because of
the great spiritual fulfillment I was experiencing.
But my independent spirit finally
emerged. Not content to receive all my religious knowledge from one man, I
pursued my own studies. I soon found that I disagreed with some of Hammas’
teachings about the Quran, and we parted ways. In 1973, I traveled to Libya and
Saudi Arabia to learn enough Arabic to study the Quran on my own. I emerged
from this pilgrimage with my beliefs clarified and my faith renewed.
From that year to this, I have never
wavered or regretted my decision to convert to Islam. When I look back, I wish
I could have done it in a more private way, without all the publicity and fuss
that followed. But at the time I was adding my voice to the civil rights
movement by denouncing the legacy of slavery and the religious institutions
that had supported it. That made it more political than I had intended and
distracted from what was, for me, a much more personal journey.
Many people are born into their
religion. For them it is mostly a matter of legacy and convenience. Their
belief is based on faith, not just in the teachings of the religion but also in
the acceptance of that religion from their family and culture. For the person who converts, it is a matter of fierce
conviction and defiance. Our belief is based on
a combination of faith and logic because we need a powerful reason to abandon
the traditions of our families and community to embrace beliefs foreign to both. Conversion is a risky business because it can result in losing
family, friends and community support.
Some fans still call me Lew, then
seem annoyed when I ignore them. They don’t understand that their lack of
respect for my spiritual choice is insulting. It’s as if they see me as a toy
action figure, existing solely to decorate their world as they see fit, rather
than as an individual with his own life.
Kermit the Frog famously complained,
“It’s not easy being green.” Try being Muslim in America. According to a Pew
Research Center poll on attitudes about major religious groups, the U.S. public
has the least regard for Muslims — slightly less than it has for atheists —
even though Islam is the third-largest faith in America. The acts of
aggression, terrorism and inhumanity committed by those claiming to be Muslims
have made the rest of the world afraid of us.
Without really knowing the peaceful
practices of most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, they see only the worst
examples. Part of my conversion to Islam is
accepting the responsibility to teach others about my religion, not to convert
them but to co-exist with them through mutual respect, support and peace. One world does not have to mean one religion, just one belief
in living in peace.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the
National Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer. During his 20
seasons in the league, he won six championships and was named its most valuable
player six times.The views expressed in this article are the author's
own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
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