William Beaver
October 3, 1999
I left Rainbow Publications in November 92 and moved to Kuwait, where I opened a Kajukenbo school. One of my students brought back a copy of Martial Arts America from the US last week, and I was astonished when I read it. We have so much [in our views of the martial arts] in common.
Most of my students are Muslim Arabs, and from reading your article about Christianity and the martial arts, there are surprisingly similar problems. A couple of examples:
- Muslims don't believe in pictures of holy men, including Jesus (whom they consider a prophet). This translates into a disbelief in the usual martial arts tradition of putting pictures of the instructor on the wall and bowing to it. I don't even use terms like Sensei, with its eastern baggage. They just use a common term among Arab sports: captain (meaning something like "coach".)
- I have to teach kajukenbo almost completely devoid of references to things philosophical. What I adopted was a way of teaching important concepts like visualization and mental rehearsal, etc, by using the terminology and context of Olympic sports psychology. This was a challenge since I have a BA and MA in philosophy.
William Beaver is a former editor of Karate/Kung Fu Illustrated, and associate editor of Black Belt and Martial Arts Training magazines (1990-1992).