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:

1. 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".)
2. 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).