During the summer of 1968, Alcindor took the shahada twice and converted to Sunni Islam from Catholicism. He adopted the Arabic name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, though he did not begin using it publicly until 1971. He boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics, deciding not to try out for the U.S. Olympic basketball team, who went on to win the gold medal. Alcindor was protesting the unequal treatment of African Americans in the United States, stating that he was “trying to point out to the world the futility of winning the gold medal for this country and then coming back to live under oppression”.
Kareem’s bold protest in 1968
When the Olympic tournament was about to take place in Mexico City, Abdul-Jabbar was still at UCLA, playing for the Bruins and working on his history degree. At this point, “Cap” was not yet the global sports icon he would later become. However, two things stood out:
First, Abdul-Jabbar’s play was already so dominant that he received an invitation to join Team USA for the Olympics. Second, his decision to turn it down made major headlines.
Kareem’s refusal was a strong protest against racial injustice. Even though the Jim Crow laws had officially ended only a few years earlier, African Americans still faced major inequality.
The 7’2″ center felt that playing for a country that continued to oppress his people would go against the true spirit of the Olympics. As he put it, he wanted to show the world “the futility of winning the gold medal for this country and then coming back to live under oppression.”
To this day, Abdul-Jabbar, now 78, has never shied away from speaking out on social and political issues — a mindset shaped early in his life. At the start of this journey, the well-read NBA icon looked up to civil rights activist Malcolm X and baseball legend Jackie Robinson — two African Americans who stood up for what they believed in.
The New York native was also a committed follower of Islam, which led to the name change mentioned earlier. His spiritual quest took him outside the United States. In 1973, the Milwaukee Bucks icon traveled to Saudi Arabia and Libya, hoping to deepen his connection to his faith.
