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Originally Posted by desertdetroiter
He was a complicated and conflicted man.
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Not really, if one reads his messages and viewpoints he knew where he stood, it was others having the problem with where he stood. After a lifetime of personal experience he also realized his faults........haven't we all.
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His country forced him into his beliefs by their treatment of him and his people. I'm sure that he'd have been a lot more popular with his detractors if he'd just remained a mealy mouthed kneegrow, but that wasn't his style.
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The government was drafting ALL people, just as they did my dad, my uncles and other members of my family. They were not just drafting blacks into serving, I hope you actually know this! Ali's belief was the people in that country did nothing to him. Nice try, trying to make it look like Ali connected this to slavery.......
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The man is my hero. I don't care what anyone says about him.
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I find this an interesting quote from you! Most people who have heroes tend to be somewhat like that person.......
Let me show you a few things about your hero.........
Muhammad Ali Backed Reagan and Many Other Republicans
In his eye-opening book, “Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King’s Dream,”
He startled many longtime fans in 1984 by endorsing President Ronald Reagan for re-election. Ali also backed friend and former New Mexico Gov. David Cargo in a losing race for Congress in 1986, proclaiming Republican Cargo was "the right white." He also stumped for South Carolina’s conservative former State GOP Chairman Van Hipp for Congress in 1994 and helped Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch win re-election in 1988.
"I like Orrin," Ali told reporters in 1988, "He's a nice fella. He's a capable man and he's an honest man. And he fights for what he believes in." Ali said he had been particularly moved the year before watching Hatch in the televised Iran-Contra hearings and in the hearings on Robert Bork’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
But it was "The Champ's" support of Reagan in '84 that made the most headlines. Having backed Rev. Jesse Jackson in his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Ali announced in October of that year that he was switching his support to Republican Reagan.
"He's keeping God in schools and that's enough," explained Ali, who was later joined by fellow past heavyweight champions Joe Frazier and Floyd Patterson in endorsing Reagan.
commentators.com
Muhammad Ali was changing in ways that few people saw or chose to see. He traces his hour of enlightenment to “around 1983.” It was only then that he became a “true believer.” Always more honest than the mythmakers around him, Ali sheds needed light here on his own reality. Before this moment, he confesses to biographer Tom Hauser, “I thought I was a true believer, but I wasn’t. I fit my religion to do what I wanted. I did things that were wrong, and chased women all the time.”
This is a stunning admission. It should inform the rest of the Hauser biography and all Ali biographies. Told honestly, these accounts should read like the “Confessions of St. Augustine” or the “Autobiography of Malcolm X” or even the George Foreman story. They should tell a story of a life that was largely squandered on race hatred and sexual exploitation until the protagonist is blinded by the light on his own personal road to Damascus.
“I conquered the world, and it didn’t bring me true happiness,” Ali admits. “The only true satisfaction comes from honoring and worshipping God.” The guardians of Ali’s myth, however, can write no such story. To do so, they would have to concede that Ali’s opposition to war was no more principled than his stance on extramarital sex. Were they to question his value system, they would have to question their own. Few among them were as willing as Ali to do so.
His chroniclers prefer to write his story as one of seamless virtue. In the retelling, the moment of self-awareness comes in the early 1960s and enlightens all that happens thereafter. Any subsequent incidents that might challenge the myth of the proud, black, independent Muslim hero are typically edited down to the nub or ignored. In 1965, of course, Ali put his still embryonic myth to the test by betraying Malcolm X. In 1984, he put his mature myth to an even more severe test when he publicly supported Ronald Reagan and even attended the Republican National Convention.
This should not have come as a shock. A majority of voters in 49 states – Massachusetts and New York included – voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984. An overwhelming majority of those Americans, like Ali, who both worshiped God and paid high taxes supported Reagan. In his devotion to God and in his avoidance of drink and drugs and even dance, Ali could have fit right in with the “Moral Majority.”
At a Fourth of July celebration in Washington, for instance, Ali publicly scolded Louis Farrakhan for an ongoing series of threats and insults against Jews. “What he teaches is not at all what we believe in,” said Ali boldly
. “We say he represents the time of our struggle in the dark and a time of confusion in us and we don’t want to be associated with that at all.”
Talk about a man making a statement..........Amen!
"Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong." ~Muhammad Ali
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Originally Posted by kevinm
He converted to Islam ( racist Louis Farrakan type ) and changed his name.
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From my research he was this kind of Muslim,
Sufism - ReligionFacts which, is rejected by many muslims.
I would say his faith was the combination of Christ kindness, mixed with;
The core principles of Sufism are tawakkul (absolute trust in God) and tawhid (the truth that there is no deity but God). Tawhid is rich in meaning for mystics: it has been interpreted by some as meaning that nothing truly exists but God or that nature and God are but two aspects of the same reality.
The love of God for man and the love of man for God are also very central to Sufism, and are the subjects of most Islamic mystical poetry and hymns.
"A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”~ Muhammad Ali
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