Sports legends Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar denounce Donald Trump’s incendiary bigoted statements.
Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, perhaps two of professional sports most recognizable names, are hitting back at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the wake of his fiercely racist anti-Muslim comments.
President Barack Obama reminded the American people that “Muslim-Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes” in an address to the nation in the wake of the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.
As conservative website Forbes reports: “Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, whose campaign has taken an incendiary if not downright bigoted tone, tweeted in response he couldn’t recall any of the Muslim sports heroes who the president was referring to.”
Abdul-Jabbar blasted Trump last week in an op-ed published by Time in which he compared Trump’s incessant fear-mongering to terrorism:
The terrorist campaign against American ideals is winning. Fear is rampant. Gun sales are soaring. Hate crimes are increasing. Bearded hipsters are being mistaken for Muslims. And 83 percent of voters believe a large-scale terrorist attack is likely here in the near future. Some Americans are now so afraid that they are willing to trade in the sacred beliefs that define America for some vague promises of security from the very people who are spreading the terror. “Go ahead and burn the Constitution — just don’t hurt me at the mall.” That’s how effective this terrorism is.
“I’m not talking about ISIS. I’m talking about Donald Trump,” the six-time NBA champion and league Most Valuable Player wrote, adding that:
While Trump is not slaughtering innocent people, he is exploiting such acts of violence to create terror here to coerce support. As I have written before, his acts could be interpreted as hate crimes. He sounds the shrill alarm of impending doomsday even though since 9/11, about 30 Americans a year have been killed in terrorist attacks worldwide — as The Atlantic pointed out, “roughly the same number as are crushed to death each year by collapsing furniture.” Trump’s irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric and deliberate propagation of misinformation have created a frightened and hostile atmosphere that could embolden people to violence. He’s the swaggering guy in old Westerns buying drinks for everyone in the saloon while whipping them up for a lynching.
That same day, former heavyweight champion of the world and peace activist Muhammad Ali took his own jabs at “so called Islamic Jihadists” and those who would “use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” declaring in a statement to NBC News that:
I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.
FEATURED IMAGE: “Box24-knock-down“. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.
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