In Tebow We Trust

Few athletes in recent years have made football as compelling to watch as Tim Tebow. The guy throws wounded-duck passes for three quarters, and still finds a way to win with overtime heroics, even though his player stats suggest that a victory is impossible. 

Of course, proclaiming his Christian faith on and off the field has made Tebow controversial to say the least. Sandra Fish, who teaches journalism at the University of Colorado, asks this supposedly provocative question at the Washington Post website: “Tim Tebow: Would we love him if he were Muslim?”

Fish proceeds to draw a baffling parallel. “The lauding of Tebow’s Christianity has me recollecting another Denver athlete who once flaunted his faith, on the basketball court in the mid-1990s, and paid a price for it.” Fish then goes on to tell the tale of former Denver Nuggets point guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who, following his conversion to Islam, called the American flag “a symbol of oppression and tyranny” and received a one-game suspension for refusing to stand for the national anthem. Abdul-Rauf’s actions didn’t win him any new fans. He was traded to Sacramento and left the league two years later.

“But if a Muslim player thanked Allah after every game, ended every interview with ‘praise Allah,’ would we afford him the same respect we give Tebow? Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf knows the answer.”

You got that, sports fans? You’re religious bigots or something. Never mind that two of the greatest and most revered NBA players in history​—​Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Hakeem Olajuwon​—​were both Muslim. Muhammad Ali made some pretty sharp anti-American critiques, and yet George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Funnily enough, in November, sports columnist Jen Engel asked the same question as Fish and arrived at an entirely different answer: