ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some insight into how antiblack racism and Islamophobia are maintained in sport. It examines the media representation of the first black African to play in the National Basketball Association, Hakeem Olajuwon. The chapter discusses the aforementioned homogenization of Islam in a literature review that also includes previous research concerning Olajuwon and Islam in sport. It explores two broad themes—under the headings Constructing the Foreign Black Other and Maintaining Essentialized Islam—that trace the development of Olajuwon’s representation from black African immigrant to devout Muslim. The chapter deals with the complexities of Olajuwon’s representation and the contradictory nature of representing the foreign black/religious other in Western media. The culmination of events detailed earlier—domestic problems, on/off-court fights, and allegations of drug use—in the late 1980s appears to have driven Olajuwon’s return to religion. Olajuwon’s status as a “good” Muslim or “good” black is contingent on adherence to certain appropriate behaviors and discourses.
