The Great British-Pakistani Boxing Hope: Khan

He is a British citizen of Pakistani descent and a practicing Muslim. At 11, he was a boxing prodigy. By his teens, he was the best young amateur boxer in the United Kingdom. Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of cafe con leche. His handshake is weak, his long, delicate fingers as easily crushed, it seems, as the stem of a flower. The young Asian women, with diamond studs in their noses and bindis on their foreheads, stood by the boxing ring of the Braehead Arena in Glasgow, Scotland, their cellphone cameras at the ready. Khan is not the first British Asian Muslim boxer, though there haven’t been many of them. Music blared from the loudspeakers — cheering, whistling, blowing horns and stamping their feet until a figure in a satin hooded robe appeared and the noise dissolved into a single, bellowing chant, a name. “Khan! Khan! Khan!”