The Champ: knockouts, protests, sufism and the man
[ by Charles Cameron — Muhammad Ali ]
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The knockout:
Obviously, the champ was a knockout — and this photo is almost certainly the loveliest photo of a sporting event I have ever seen — victory and defeat in perfect symmetry:
Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images via The Guardian
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The protestor
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The sufi:
How did your dad come to embrace Sufi Islam, and what attracts him to it?
My father has a collection of books by a man named Hazrat Inayat Khan. They’re Sufi teachings. He read them front to cover. They’re old and yellow and the pages are torn. They’re amazing. He always says they’re the best books in the world.
My father is very spiritual — more spiritual now than he is religious. It was important for him to be very religious and take the stands he did in earlier years. It was a different time. He still tries to convert people to Islam, but it’s not the same. His health and his spirituality have changed, and it’s not so much about being religious, but about going out and making people happy, doing charity, and supporting people and causes.
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The man:
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May he cross the bridge and attain the lake.
June 5th, 2016 at 7:55 pm
Ali reads one of his poems:
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June 8th, 2016 at 6:27 pm
I just read a very interesting piece by an Orthodox Christian priest on Muhammad Ali & his “apostasy” from Christianity to Islam, titled Mohammad Ali, Islam, and Christian Preachers
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It’s on Pravmir, a Russian Orthodox site. Here’s a key passage, to give you the general sense of the piece:
June 9th, 2016 at 5:59 pm
For a detailed examination of the claim that Ali was a sufi, see Was Muhammad Ali a Sufi?
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The short answer: probably not an initiated murid (student, devotee) in a specific tariqa or sufi order, but “his heart was in Sufism”.