I’ll happily argue with anyone that he is the greatest center basketball has seen to date.
I’ll staunchly defend the man for his dedication, both to his team and his religion, after watching him play at the professional level while fasting for Ramadan.
I’ll have to sit aside meekly, however, if anybody wants to question the wisdom of the charitable contributions of Hakeem Olajuwon.
A mosque established and funded by Hakeem Olajuwon gave more than $80,000 to charities the government later determined to be fronts for the terror groups al-Qaida and Hamas, according to financial records obtained by The Associated Press.
Olajuwon told AP he had not known of any links to terrorism when the donations were made, before the government’s crackdown on the groups, and would not have given the money if he had known.
“There is no way you can go back in time,” Olajuwon said by telephone from Jordan, where he is studying Arabic. “After the fact, now they have the list of organizations that are banned by the government.”
A U.S. Treasury Department spokeswoman, Molly Millerwise, declined to discuss Olajuwon’s contributions but said, “In many cases, donors are being unwittingly misled by the charities.”
Federal law enforcement officials said they were not probing Olajuwon, a 7-foot center born in Nigeria who played 17 seasons for the Houston Rockets before retiring in 2002. Olajuwon became a U.S. citizen in 1993.
The Olajuwon-founded Islamic Da’Wah Center in Houston gave more than $60,000 in 2000 and $20,000 in 2002 to the Islamic African Relief Agency, the center’s tax records show. The government shut down the relief agency in October, saying it gave money and other support to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
But the agency and its possible ties to terrorism had been in news stories years earlier, before Olajuwon’s contributions
Olajuwon also participated in a 1999 celebrity bowling tournament for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which the U.S. government shut down in 2001, accusing it of sending money to Hamas.
Call me biased because I lived in the Houston area for the bulk of the Dream’s NBA career and the loving local press that entailed, but I have no doubt about Olajuwon’s innocence in this matter. That said, he should look more carefully into the causes where his time and money go. He also should’ve blocked out better in the closing moments against the Wolfpack.