If you're an Ali fan this clip might make you angry

I found Lewis a bit creepy in the interview, to be honest.

 

Ali "changed his tune" when Elijah Muhammad died because Louis Farrakhan took over the N.O.I. and booted Ali out of it. They hated each other.
It was 1975, just a few months after Ali's notorious Playboy interview where a called for race and religious murder.

Ali went with the splinter group started by Warith Deen Mohammed because there was no where else to go.

I doubt he changed his beliefs at all.

 

I saw Jerry about a half dozen times or more at a restaurant he frequented. He always had the same table, often alone. He would gave you this look like "please don't recognize me!" Yet his table was right up front. I made a point of paying him no heed. Though I was tempted to plop down beside and ask "did you really know Dean Martin?!"

 

I think your history of the NOI is inaccurate.
I might be wrong but I was under the impression that Warith Deen (Wallace) Muhammad took over the NOI on his father's death and brought in revsions and reforms it and it kind of dissolved away into an orthodox Sunni muslim collection of mosques, open to all races. Basically saying what his father had taught was helpful in its time for black people, but fundamentally WRONG, a false version of "Islam".

Of course there were hardliners who wanted to hang on to the old style NOI, black separatism, tales of spaceships etc., and they splintered off, and Farrakhan became the best leader and organizer of those groups and over the next few years he built his own NOI along similar lines to Elijah Muhammad's sect. It attracted new generations in the 1980s and 90s.
I think it is wrong to portray Warith Deen Muhammad as "the splinter group", he was in fact the chosen leader upon Elijah Muhammad's death.

Regarding Muhammad Ali's beliefs, I think he just believed what he was told to believe. He was a FOLLOWER, not a leader.

 

Since this thread went towards a critical ****ysis of Ali's views and personality here's my 5 cents:

Political figure
This is, in my view, more complex than both the general popular view as well as the one held by many here.

Ali's spouting Black Muslim propaganda about racial separation and death penalty for mixed couples etc are abhorrent and vile. And even though there are reasons to believe that it didn't mirror him as a private person but rather was him uncritically reiterating Elijah Muhammed's views, he has to be held accountable for saying such horrible things. And it's not like he was an angry, confused teenager. He was a grown man and perhaps the most revered and famous one on the planet. Make no mistake, this is very much a black mark on his legacy.

On the other hand, he also showed bravery in standing up for his beliefs whether you agree with them or not. His stance on not going to war in Vietnam seemed very much his own, and he stayed to face the consequences of those actions when many others didn't. I think he played a positive role in that sense.

Treatment of opponents
Ali was one of the first to introduce trash talk in boxing, and while his name calling could be insulting (Big Ugly Bear, the Rabbit, the Washerwoman, the Mummy, the Gorilla, the Peanut etc), there was in most case a sense of humour about the whole thing as well. Doesn't automatically make it right, but still comes out reasonably well compared to for example Tyson's talk about wanting to smash his opponent's noses up into their brains and how they squeeled as women when he hit them in the gut imo.

The times when true vitriol came into the trash talk seems to me have been against opponents that made a point of calling him Clay instead of Ali (Patterson, Terrel, Frazier and, if I'm not mistaken, Bonavena). And I can see how he took exception to that. He suffered a lot of abuse and death threats from mostly whites for renouncing what he (quite rightly it seems to me) perceived as a slave name. To then have other blacks showing their contempt for that choice must have both hurt and infuriated him. And also made him feel contemptous of them in turn, seeing them as lackeys for the white establishement ("Uncle Toms" in his vocabulary).

And while I can understand for example Patterson's distate for the Black Muslims' racist agenda, I've never heard him speak out so forcefully against the racism that Afro-American suffered from. I can see how this seemed to Ali like he was running the errands of the white establishement. And while Terrrel and Frazier never put their refusal to call him Ali in the same context, it must have been quite easy to foresee how he would react to it after his spat with Patterson on the subject. I think one has to view his dealings with these men at least partly out of this perspective.

And then there is also the case of the humane side he showed in the ring - on several occasions letting off against helpless opponents (both black and white) even before the referee intervened.

Private person
Here is where Ali comes off the best imo. He did slap his first wife around at a party when she wouldn't dress as a proper muslim woman, but he also showed many accounts of spontanous compassion. For example after the Mildenberger fight when he found out that the (white) referee had managed to lose his pay for the fight and reimbursed him straight out of his own pocket. He was also the first one to visit Norton at the hospital after his near fatal car crash. And there are quite a few other stories of this nature.

So, in summary, a complex man with good and bad sides, but who seemed to outgrow many of the bad ones. Is the public perception of him somewhat skewed? Yes. But that is also true of many that pride themselves to know more than the "average Joe" on the subject.

 

I think it was just as I indicated it was.
I don't have time now to find references, but I will later today.
If I'm wrong I will admit it.

Edit- I was wrong. W. Deen Muhammad took over N.O.I. when his father died and immediately did away with the old man's nuttiness. He aligned himself with mainstream Islam.
Ali followed him and, as you said, did what he was told.

Farrakhan broke away in 1978 and recreated the original, racist N.O.I.

 

1. I don't think Terrell went out of his way to insult Ali by calling him Clay. It was more a case of calling him what he'd always called him, he'd known him for years. Just a habit. And then Ali went crazy calling him "Uncle Tom" and stuff. And that point, Terrell had no incentive to call him Ali, since Ali was being so nasty about it.
It seems very irrational to me if someone changes their name and then attacks anyone who mistakenly calls him by his old name.
The case of Patterson may have been different.

2. Patterson was an advocate of civil rights and desegregation. His distaste for Ali's beliefs would be motivated by those factors.
Contrary to popular belief, Ali was AGAINST the civil rights movement. His persona and outspokenness made him a figure of black pride but he was against integration, civil rights and working towards any political solution with white people.

Patterson was a civil rights activist. That in itself speaks against institutionalised white racism. Patterson was speaking out on rights for blacks when Cassius Clay was just doing poems and saying how pretty he was.

It's probably an injustice of history that Patterson's place as the civil rights heavyweight champion has been ignored in favour of Ali who was in fact opposed to the whole thing.

 

Just wanted to point out that Ali's refusal to be drafted was that it was against his religion to fight in wars. May I remind everyone that he was/is a Muslim? If don't see where anytime in history Muslims didn't fight anyone and everyone because it was against their religion.

I guess all the wars, invasions, forced conversions, beheadings, etc since the 7th century weren't the "real Islam". It was something else. Apparently.

 

I find it hard to believe that Terrell didn't do on purpose after the whole furor after the Patterson incident. But who knows, maybe he didn't. Anyway, Ali, in the cornered situation he was in at the time, clearly didn't believe so and I can understand why.

As for Floyd, yeah, I can see his rationale. And I can also see why his stance seemed hypocritical in Ali's eyes.

It's not necessarily always one side against the other. At times you can understand both.

But you also have to factor in the times. Ali was perhaps the most hated man in America (certainly one of them) among whites and of course very sensitive to have other blacks (Patterson that he had idolized as a kid and Terrel who had been his buddy) take the same side as the many racists that wanted him dead or worse.

Even if their reasons wasn't mean spirited it's not hard to see why Ali would view them as such.

 

From the little I know about Islam, I think it has to be a "holy war" to be considered alright to participate in. Hard to qualify the Vietnam war as holy in this sense.

Anyhow, the argument had enough merit for the Supreme Court to buy it.

But who knows what his reasons really were. Often in life you have several reasons for doing something and yourself have a hard time keeping track of which they truly are. Not wanting to against his religion, not wanting to fight for a system and government he felt oppressed his people, not just plain wanting to go to war - it could well be all of them to different degrees.

 

The N.O.I which Ali belonged to had nothing to do with legitimate Islam.
Ali said he would only fight in a war approved by Elijah Muhammad.
To be a Conscientious Objector, one had to be against all wars, not just some.
He failed the test for a C.O. status.

The Supreme Court did not buy his argument. It didn't even evaluate his argument.
It overturned his conviction on the technicality that the Department of Justice had mishandled Ali's appeal.

The government could have retried him, but it chose not to. Nixon was president and was trying to move away from the draft and kill it as an issue and as a cause of riots and demonstrations.

 

Yeah, a technicality that came about because the US Government already had conceded that Ali's opposition to the war was based upon religious training and belief and that his opposition was sincere.

But if that religion really had anything to do with it... who knows. My money is on that the truth lies somewhere pretty close to his two most famous quotes on the matter "I got no quarrel with them Viet Cong" and "No Viet Cong ever called me ******". But it's all speculation.

What we do know is that he took his chances in the courts and in the end won.

 

The technicality that overturned his conviction, was that the DoJ wrote a memo to the appeals board saying they opposed overturning Ali's conviction but they did not word it properly.

Their opposition was based on the fact that there were three tests for a Contentious Objector- all three must be satisfied:

1. Belong to a religious organization that opposes war.
2. Did not join the organization simply to avoid the draft
3. Must oppose all wars, not just some.

The DoJ conceded 1 and 2. Ali's own words indicated he did not pass 3. He did approve of some wars- those that were called for by Elijah Muhammad.

Ali told Sugar Ray Robinson that he wanted to go- get it over with and not ruin his career. He said he couldn't because Elijah Muhammad had told him not to and Ali was afraid of him. The old man had already assassinated Malcolm X and Ali knew he could do the same thing to him.

 

Source please.

Btw, Hauser's book does not support what you said about the change of leadership NOI.

 

I don't know who Hauser is and don't much care what his book says.

This came from my post:

Edit- I was wrong. W. Deen Muhammad took over N.O.I. when his father died and immediately did away with the old man's nuttiness. He aligned himself with mainstream Islam.
Ali followed him and, as you said, did what he was told.

Farrakhan broke away in 1978 and recreated the original, racist N.O.I.


As far as a source- go find it yourself. Google it- it's there.