Muhammad Ali’s "Beautiful Soul"

http://netwmd.com ^ | December 1, 2005 | Daniel Pipes

[forty_years]

In an article two days ago, "Muhammad Ali v. George W. Bush," I castigated President Bush bestowing a prestigious award on former boxer Muhammad Ali and for lavishly praising Ali's beautiful soul, his compassion, and his being a man of peace. I offered some evidence to the contrary and concluded by calling this incident "the nadir of his presidency."

The column prompted a fair amount of comment, positive and negative. I'd like to note here two noteworthy responses. One is from Judea Pearl, father of the late Daniel Pearl, murdered by Islamists in Pakistan in 2002:

When Danny was in captivity, we pleaded with Louis Farrakhan and Muhammad Ali to use their influence in the Muslim world and issue an appeal for his release. Farrakhan said: "Not ready." Ali did not hesitate a minute and issued a plea that only Satan could resist; it was published next day in Pakistan. Ali further called me by phone and insisted on being invited to the party, once Danny is released. Jesse Jackson then made a statement, without our even soliciting him. At that point, Farrakhan came back and said: I am ready. But by then, it was too late. I appreciate Ali's coming forward and, when I spoke at Danny's memorial (which Ali and his wife attended), I called him "a champion of humanity." Later on, though, when we asked him to join the Honorary Board of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, he declined on the grounds that he must focus his energy on his own foundation.

To which my response is this: I am delighted to hear that Muhammad Ali did these good deeds. But by 2002 he was far along with Parkinson's disease, so his decisions were largely made by his handlers in his name. These do not provide real insight into his character.

That character, rather, was shown earlier, when Ali had full control of his facilities. To understand that better, I turn to Jack Cashill, author of the forthcoming book, Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King's Dream. Cashill sent me a copy of the book manuscript and it, to say the least, confirms my thesis about Ali's poor behavior. Here is an excerpt, reviewing Ali's negative accomplishments during his first crucial years in the public eye, 1960-75:

• Ali knowingly betrayed Malcolm X, a betrayal that led at least indirectly to Malcolm's assassination.
• Ali publicly turned his back on his press secretary, Leon 4X Ameer, which led to Ameer's death.
• When Nation of Islam activists executed five friends and family of the Hanafi sect—four of them children—Ali did not quit the Nation or even publicly protest. Nor did the media ask him to.
• For at least four years running Ali publicly degraded Joe Frazier, often along the crudest racial lines. "There's a great honor about Joe," says baseball great Reggie Jackson. "That was evident in the way he fought. And Muhammad ridiculed Joe; he humiliated him in front of the world."
• Ali also verbally and physically abused Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell, two men who did not deserve it.
• Ali was an unapologetic sexist. "In the Islamic world," he told Playboy, "the man's the boss, and the woman stays in the background. She don't want to call the shots." He wrote this in 1975, three years into the doomed struggle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Feminists still wrestle over this one.
• While the black family was under assault, with its rate of unwed births nearly tripling during these fifteen years, Ali was fathering children out of wedlock with at least one teenage girl.
• He also was about to leave four of his children without a father in the home after rejecting their Muslim mother for a more glamorous, only marginally black eighteen year-old.
• Belinda Ali was the second wife he had publicly humiliated. Sonji was the first.
• Ali remained an unabashed racist, calling for an American apartheid and the lynching of interracial couples as late as 1975.
• In the years that mattered, Ali drove a wedge between the races. This may not have been evident to the cultural elite, but anyone who had been at Gary or like venues would know exactly what I mean.
• He routinely denigrated black heroes who did not share his point of view, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall among them.
• He continuously belittled and undermined Christianity, a bedrock of cultural stability in black America.
• Ali shamelessly courted some of the most brutal dictators on the planet: Qaddafi, Idi Amin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Nkrumah, Mobutu, Marcos.
• One of those dictators, Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Wa Za Banga, was complicit in the death of the black nationalist hero, Patrice Lumumba.
• Ali helped launch the career of Don King.
• And, oh yes, he rejected his country in its hour of need and expressed no regret at the fate of those millions we all abandoned. The man who compelled him to do so had conspired with the Japanese and cheered them on at Pearl Harbor.

With due understatement, Cashill comments that this summing up, "however unpleasant, sheds some useful light both on the young Ali and the generation that made him."

I repeat: this is not someone suitable to be honored by the president of the United States.

http://netwmd.com/blog/2005/12/01/192

[Restorer]

IMHO, Don King is just too weird.

His politics are to his credit, but that don't make him any less weird.

[IronJack]

Muhammed Ali started the trend of loud-mouthed sports stars that has since begat the likes of Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, and Mike Tyson. Low-life pukes who have some modicum of talent in their vapid professions, but whose value as humans is limited to making their owners money.

[OldEagle]

Technically, Ali wasn't a draft dodger or draft resister. He showed up at the appointed time at Houston Main and refused induction. Right or wrong he didn't flee to Canada, Amsterdam or Sweden. He showed up, declined and took his medicine.
As an American citizen and a Vietnam veteran I do not agree with his stand and do not understand mainly because of the benefits he derived from being an American.
I knew a lot of people who could have avoided Vietnam and some of them didn't return.
Slick Willie avoided Vietnam and has never faced the music.

[Rummyfan]

Yes, one and the same. He was nominated by a Swiss legislator - for all those children's books he has authored. I suppose anyone can be 'nominated'!

[drjimmy]

Muhammed Ali started the trend of loud-mouthed sports stars that has since begat the likes of Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, and Mike Tyson. Low-life pukes who have some modicum of talent in their vapid professions, but whose value as humans is limited to making their owners money.

Not to mention jerks like John McEnroe, Tony Stewart, Bobby Knight, David Wells, Todd Bertuzzi, and John Daly.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Yes, one and the same. He was nominated by a Swiss legislator - for all those children's books he has authored. I suppose anyone can be 'nominated'!"

I'm not a big fan of the death penalty, but I am always suspicious of these death-row guys who become heroes of the Left. My suspicion is that they have become heroes to the Left because at some fundamental and devious level, they are basically unrepentant, no matter how they might try to appear to the general public. I think murderers who are truly repentant are unlikely to become icons of the Left.

[IronJack]

Suffice it to say that before Muhammed Ali, sports stars were role models for children -- at least on the surface. Ali's bragging self-promotion put an end to that. After him, the more vain, the better.

Now that he is a drooling old fool, we're supposed to get all misty about his "contributions" to mankind. But nothing he can do will ever make up for the destruction of humility for which he was personally responsible.

Now he's got plenty to be humble about. And the previous poster was right: this man deserves our universal disgust, not a presidential award.

[Jaxter]

"Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Wa Za Banga"

You're not going to believe it but that was exactly the sound my old Ford made just before the transmission went.

[word_warrior_bob]

I have a friend of the family who worshipped Ali, he had scrapbooks, rare pictures, etc. Ali signed most of the pages and pictures.

Say what you want about Ali, but he was kind to strangers and fans, I was supposed to go to meet him as a kid but I had to get up at 5 AM and didn't go.

Ali invited my friend to come to to Pennsylvania and stay on weekends whenever he wanted, he has tons of pictures of his visits. He allowed him to bring whoever he wanted too.

These scrapbooks are huge, I was alllowed to borrow them once. Ali was very kind to an ordinary Joe, Bundini Brown used to try and steal the scrapbooks though!

Jimmy Breslin mentioned my friend when Ali was first hospitalized, he came to visit Ali and said of him to the effect that he was the only person who didn't want anything from Ali except his friendship which he gladly offered.

Last I asked him, he couldn't get through to him any more because of all of the layers of people protecting him.

[word_warrior_bob]

I should also add that my friend is white, I think the Nation of Islam polluted his thinking only to a point and I make no apologies for for Ali. Just knowing this side of him takes SOME of the edge off his negatives.

Ali was surrounded by vultures, I think he took in my friend to try and maintain some connection with reality.

[DugwayDuke]

"Suffice it to say that before Muhammed Ali, sports stars were role models for children -- at least on the surface. Ali's bragging self-promotion put an end to that. After him, the more vain, the better."

I disagree. I thought the same as you until I saw Ali once in the LAX airport spend 45 minutes dealing with the public. His limo was waiting outside the luggage return while Ali took the time to do every autograph requested. He must have held 10 kids up on his shoulder to have pictures taken. I've seen a lot of athletes do far worse. I was impressed with his quiet and humble approach to all who approached him.

[SonnyBubba]

Someone need to find the seventies Playboy interview with
him and read about what, he says, Allah will do to America
for its treatment of blacks.

[SonnyBubba]

Under the influence of Elijah Mohammad — who preached that blacks should refuse to integrate with "white devils" — Ali made a point of dating only black women and lashed out at men and women who engaged in interracial sex. In an interview with Playboy, he declared: "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman." When the interviewer asked about black women crossing the colour barrier, Ali responded: "Then she dies. Kill her.

[csmusaret]

Didn't Don King do time in prison for murder?

[Positive]

Actually Tookie isn't on death row...he's on DEAD row.

[Petronski]

First time I saw the title, I thought misread it as Mohammad Ali: "Beautiful Sod"