Arab News
Aijaz Zaka Syed
Muhammad Ali’s boxing career had been over by the time I grew up. We did not even have a television then; so there was no question of watching his epic battles or even his show bouts around the world in the ’80s. However, I grew up with his larger than life persona, thanks to my uncle who hopelessly adored and often discussed him with my father.
He had a small gym at home where he and his friends spent long hours working out and admiring themselves in mirror. My uncle referred to the boxing legend as ‘Muhammad Ali Cillay’ as it was spelt in Urdu. My father always corrected him saying it’s not Cillay but Clay.
So Ali’s death has been a personal tragedy in many ways. It’s as if someone in the family has departed. But I’m not the only one to be weighed down by this sense of personal loss. Hundreds of millions of people around the world who don’t follow sports felt that indefinable, personal connection with the Champ. Many like me even hated the cruel, inhuman game of heavyweight boxing.
What was it that made Ali the Greatest, as he modestly referred to himself, and most loved sporting icon of all time then?
His incredible boxing career of 61 fights with 56 wins, his gravitas, not to mention his extraordinary sense of humor, wit and way with words certainly contributed to his legend and immense popularity around the world. He was doubtless the first truly global superstar, far ahead of his time, long before media created stars and killed them on a daily basis.
The Muslims everywhere, from Morocco to Malaysia, were crazy about him ostensibly because he was one of their own; new believers enjoy a special, exalted status in Muslim societies. But then there have been other famous converts to Islam, including the fellow heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. None of them have enjoyed the kind of frenzied love and affection showered on Ali.
Ali was adored, loved, and lionized across the Muslim world as no other figure in recent memory has been because he was the first Muslim hero and global champion where none had existed in a long, long time.
For ordinary Muslims around the world stuck with tyranny, injustice, stagnation and corrupt regimes, he was ‘brother Muhammad Ali’ — their own fighter and knight in shining armor who almost never lost any battles and who stood up to powers that be.
He offered Muslims hope and a rare sense of pride in their egalitarian faith and its ability to unite people in a single bond beyond the narrow distinctions of borders and birth.
What about the rest of the world though? What was it about Ali that struck a chord with people around the world? Why was he so universally loved and idolized — from America to Australia?
Again it had less to do with his amazing boxing career and more to do with the force of his extraordinary personality. It was his magnetic persona, exceptional self-belief coupled with his humility that allowed him to connect instantly with total strangers and above all his humanity and belief in his ideals that conquered hearts and minds everywhere. He had stood up for his rights and the rights of his people when doing so was almost unthinkable for the African Americans. And he did so with unapologetic courage. He would display the same courage of conviction and fearless moral uprightness repeatedly in his illustrious career and eventful life. When he embraced Islam, he declared it from every platform available with fierce pride, refusing to be addressed by his former ‘slave’ name, at a time when America had few Muslims.
It was the same when he defiantly refused to join the US war on Vietnam. He was prepared to sacrifice his lucrative career and name and fame and even go to jail for his beliefs. His historic words would give a new lease of life to the anti-war movement across America and Europe and are recounted time and again:“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. I ain’t got no quarrel with them VietCong! No VietCong ever called me nigger!”
