By Chris Miller: Amir Khan is not shy and does not hide the fact that he is a Muslim, he in fact seems very proud of his religion and heritage and always refers to himself as a British/Pakistani young man. This seems to rub some people up the wrong way, the sad fact of life is many around the world seem to tar other people with the same brush(very unfairly).
I’m from the U.K and at the moment here racism in football (or soccer as you guys call it in the U.S) seems to be a weekly topic in the news, which is completely backwards in the modern and multi cultural societies we tend to live in nowadays. On this site I am shocked to see some of the disgusting racist comments about certain fighters, I simply can’t believe some of them. Anyway back to the main topic. Khan is a very gifted young man, he is good looking, a very talented boxer and seems to handle the pressures of stardom very well indeed yet he seems to get unfair criticism a lot of the time. When Khan fights he comes to bring it hence the reason he has been knocked out twice in his career already.
Now I am a big Khan fan as you can clearly tell but I like to think I don’t have a biased opinion when it comes to what I write. In the not too distant past I watched a documentary about Prince Naseem Hamed, it was the BBC documentary about the days leading up to the Marco Antonio Barrera fight, it was when I was watching this that I thought if Naseem was in his prime, I truly believe he would not have been as loved, that atrocity has really affected many peoples opinions of the Islamic religion.
When I was watching the documentary on Naseem I noticed that for his ring entrance instead of having a piece of music that really got him pumped up for the fight he decided to have something that seemed like Adhan, which is a call for prayer in the Islamic religion, all around him he also had boards with Arabic inscription written over it and then when he got into the ring he spoke in Arabic to the camera with microphone in hand. How the world is now if this was Amir Khan or Naseem, if he was a fighter and either wanted to do this they would not be allowed to in the MGM Grand, Las Vegas. I understand some reasons why it wouldn’t be, it could cause fighting in the crowds or people getting hurt due to emotions running high but my point I’m trying to make is I believe things that have nothing to do with Khan have affected fight fans opinions of him.
Whatever has happened in the past somebody’s religious beliefs or race should not play a part in what people say about them, especially when it comes to being judged on sporting performances. This sport is boxing which is full of dedication,hard-work,grit and RESPECT.
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