Abdul-Rauf, Kaepernick and the Politics of Black Athletic Protest Traditions
Before there was Colin Kaepernick, there was Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. That’s the premise of Showtime’s documentary, ‘Stand’ on the former Denver Nuggets and Sacramento Kings basketball player, (formerly Chris Jackson), which was released earlier in February, during Black History Month in the United States. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Abdul-Rauf was one of the most recognisable people in American basketball and was hailed a ‘sport wonder’ for his record-breaking plays at the high school, collegiate and professional levels.
‘Stand’ is a detailed depiction of Abdul-Rauf’s journey from a young teenager struggling with Tourette syndrome, to being a ‘sporting basketball wonder’ and his role in one of the sport’s most controversial moments. Borne from his ‘exile’ from the top basketball league, for praying- instead of saluting the US flag- during the national anthem in the 1995–6 season, for which he was heavily penalised. His protest first began as a retreat to the locker room while the national anthem. It was four to six months before anyone noticed. During a court-side television interview, he described the US flag as ‘‘a symbol of …tyranny… I think this country has a long history of that. If you look at history, I don’t think you can argue the facts.’’ This soundbite, which according to ‘Stand’ was taken from a longer commentary, provoked further debate with responses ranging from charges of ‘treachery’ to open sympathy.
In the wake of the film’s release, millennials and Gen-Zers took to social media to show their dismay and bewilderment over Abdul-Rauf’s story and immediately reckoned how closely relatable his story was to that of Kaepernick’s. Similarly, Abdul-Rauf argued the US flag and national anthem were symbols of the country’s longstanding history of racial oppression and that his new-found faith in Islam and extensive reading of political literature.
“Hey, this Mahmoud thing has really touched off some nerves…I’m going to a game tonight, I hope when he’s introduced, everyone boos”, one caller said on the Denver talk radio show, presented by Joe Williams. In the documentary, the veteran broadcast journalist alleges he had stoked the media storm around Abdul Rauf’s actions, “I noticed that Mahmoud was not standing for the national anthem (during a game between Denver Nuggets and Chicago Bulls), and I assumed everyone noticed that too. I remember the next day, I brought it up on air, no one had written about it and no one had talked about it. We brought it up and of course that caused the firestorm that you could imagine.”
As a result of this, the National Basketball Association suspended him on March 12, 1996, for one game, costing Abdul Rauf $32,000 of his $2.6 million salary. They argued Abdul Rauf had broken the rule requiring “players to line up in dignified posture for the anthem.’
A compromise was later reached allowing him to stand during the anthem, where he was allowed to bow his head in silent prayer. However, his career in the US was negatively impacted. While Kaepernick and Abdul-Rauf were both blacklisted, the outcome of their protests against the US flag says more about how professional sports organisations respond to negative national media attention and the relationship the media has in shaping narratives on Black athlete protest traditions.
Flying or fighting the flag
Beyond the obvious comparisons, Abdul Rauf’s ‘Prayer Salute’, similar to ‘Kaepernick’s Kneel’ opened up the debate on what it means to be an American patriot, particularly within public domains such as sports and entertainment. It set the stage for competing narratives on the freedom of belief, speech, patriotism and race in a media spectacle, not seen since Muhammad Ali refused his military draft obligations in 1967. Director Jocelyn Rose Lyons, who made her debut with this film, says ‘I am a very big advocate for leaning into the uncomfortable moments in the story. I feel that’s where the medicine is, it’s on the edges. Mahmoud’s story for me was one of courage, and how he faced those fires and transformed those into power.’
A big part of this is how US militarism is celebrated in public spaces and how it shaped American identity from the Second World War. Sociologist Ivan Eland in his essay, ‘Is Adulation of the Military really patriotic?’ says “The US military and its opinion have acquired great prestige and are accorded hushed reverence in American society. The military and flag are worshipped as never before. And this was an important point of contention for Abdul Rauf, who explains in the documentary how his opposition to the US flag was inspired by the likes of Noam Chomsky who berates US exceptionalism as an essential yet destructive aspect of American foreign policy. Abdul Rauf says, “There are symbols that represent a system, and we (Muslims) only stand for Allah”. Fast forward to today, a new wave of sports activism allows athletes to leverage their high-profile roles to become key influencers for social causes online, which benefits them, in the long run, should they find themselves blacklisted.
In the absence of social media, personal branding for celebrities was shaped by one’s ability to practice political quietism in the full gaze of the press and conform to prevailing attitudes on how Black people should best navigate ‘professional or corporate’ spaces in post-civil rights and neo-liberal world. Abdul Rauf had also come of age during the late 80s and early 90s when political protest in sports ebbed to an all-time low; and where the line between social and injustice was less blurred. Joseph N. Cooper explains in ‘Race and Resistance: A Typology of African American sports activism’, the decline in African-American activism within and outside of sports reflected the idea that the gains of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, affirmative action policies, and increased access to white-owned capitalistic spaces had been fully realised. It is precisely why Abdul Rauf’s stance was so controversial.“White American politicians can speak all day long about America’s wrongs. But, as I quickly learned, if a Black athlete making millions of dollars claims that America is corrupt, the sky will come crashing down on his head.” Today, however, celebrities and influencers have more room to stand for the causes that are important to them, and we, the public now expect them to make use of it.
In God he trusts
In a TikTok video liked nearly 17,000 times, Abdul-Rauf says, “If it wasn’t for those types of people, the Muhammad Alis the Malcolm Xs that led me to Islam, and then reading stories about the Prophet and when Allah says stand up for justice…” For Abdul Rauf, mainstream media used the controversy to push problematic narratives about Islam, race, freedom of speech and patriotism. Therefore, the controversy surrounding Abdul-Rauf must be seen in a broader historical context of how mainstream media has been considered a religion of dissent and ‘otherness’ in the US.
As Zareena Grewal argues, immigrant/Middle Eastern expressions of Islam were capitalised by some newspapers to portray Abdul-Rauf’s position and Islamic identity as anathema to American ideals and values, mischaracterisations that became more prominent in the US press in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. An example is this caricature by cartoonist Drew Litton from Rocky Mountain News. Here, Abdul Rauf is shown as a foreigner or Middle-Eastern immigrant throwing the American flag into a dirty towel bin.
Abdul-Rauf’s suspension was the topic of numerous political cartoons, as in the Rock Mountain News’ ‘‘Win, Lose, & Drew’’ series. Credit: Drew Litton
In other cases, other Muslims of immigrant backgrounds were used in news reports to disavow Abdul-Rauf’s conflation of religiosity and politics in his protest.
In a 1996 New York Times article, Hakeem Olajuwon, a Nigerian-American Muslim basketball player for the Houston Rockets, at the time, suggested Abdul-Rauf was mistaken for using his religious convictions to be openly antagonistic against the US flag. In another video report, depicted in the documentary, Olajuwon says, ‘‘In general, Islamic teachings require every Muslim to obey and respect the law of the countries they live in. You know that is — that is Islamic teachings. You know, to be a good Muslim is to be a good citizen.”’
This points to ways in which African-American Muslims and immigrant (Black) Muslims negotiate their patriotism in relation to the state, which may inform their perspectives on dissent. However, Zareena also suggests Olajuwon’s acknowledgement of Abdul-Rauf’s taking on a different and valid religious perspective from his own was not always included in media coverage.
Ed Fowler of the Houston Chronicle reported that Olajuwon said: ‘‘(If) Abdul-Rauf is certain his interpretation is the only acceptable one, he should be applauded for taking that stand at the cost of a magnificent livelihood.’’
As interest grows in the memoir and Abdul-Rauf’s documentary, and as appears on television networks and via YouTube and Instagram to speak about his experiences, we are reminded of the privilege of social media, particularly for issues pertaining to freedom of speech and conscience.
Abdul-Rauf was a casualty of his time for this reason alone. But his stance remains the same today, as it did then when he gave in an interview with The New York Times in 1996: “I understand sometimes people view the flag as a sacred ceremony,” he said. “People fought for this country under the banner…I just felt in my heart that if I can’t do something, and as a Muslim, we try to perfect whatever it is that we do if I couldn’t stand if I couldn’t do it 100 per cent, I felt don’t do it at all.”
