SPORTS
Robert Saleh is far More Than the First Muslim Coach in the NFL The New York Jets coach is a role model who embodies the working-class and perseverant spirit
© NEW YORK JETS. PHOTO BY DAN SZPAKOWSKI/NEW YORK JETS. PUBLISHED WITH PERMISSION.
BY KHALED A. BEYDOUN
R
obert Saleh is a pioneer. After signing a five-year contract with the New York Jets on Jan. 19, he became the NFL’s first Muslim American head coach. A milestone moment for a nation marred by renewed racial reckoning, and a league beleaguered by its own turbulence. But before Saleh became a pioneer, he was a Tractor. He is a native of Dearborn, Michigan’s eastside, a blue-collar community on the margins of Detroit and the sidelines of economic anxiety. A place where Arab refugees fled war and found stability around auto factory assembly lines, raising daughters and sons in a land that didn’t always love them. A town where hard knocks and Friday night lights are not gridiron fiction, but the real-time sights of a football-obsessed community.
To be clear, East Dearborn is an Arab American football-obsessed community. Where young boys from Iraq, Yemen, Palestine and Saleh’s native Lebanon proudly don the working-class blue on the gridiron for the Fordson Tractors, from a high school
in the heart of the Midwest that houses dreams of youths with roots in the Mideast. This is the high school Saleh attended that fueled his signature fire and everyman charisma. Fordson High School, which has a 95% Arab student body, welded the grit
IT HAS BEEN SO INSPIRING TO SEE A MUSLIM WHOSE FAMILY IS ORIGINALLY FROM SOUTHERN LEBANON, COACHING MY TEAM AT SUCH AN ELITE LEVEL. I’LL BE ROOTING HIM ON WITH THE JETS AND I EXPECT PLENTY OF OTHER ARABS AND MUSLIMS WILL, TOO.” — AHMAD ABUZNAID, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST
54 ISLAMIC HORIZONS MAY/JUNE 2021
