Muhammad Ali and America’s Slave Society
Originally published at the Future of Freedom Foundation
February 27, 2017
by Jacob G. Hornberger
As most people know, it wasn’t always like that. When Ali refused to comply with a U.S. government draft order in 1964, he was vilified for being a draft dodger and, even worse, a communist sympathizer.
Keep in mind, after all, that 1964 was during the Cold War, when the official U.S. enemy was communism and communists, not Islam or Muslims. The communists were coming to getting us, the U.S. national-security establishment was constantly warning Americans. America was in grave danger of being conquered and taken over by the worldwide communist conspiracy, officials in the Pentagon and the CIA said. Communist Cuba, only 90 miles away from American shores, was a communist dagger pointed at America’s throat. And if the United States didn’t stop the communists in Vietnam, the Asian dominoes would begin falling, they maintained, until America itself became Red.
In 1964, most Americans were buying into that frightening narrative. The national-security establishment, a type of totalitarian apparatus that had been grafted onto America’s federal governmental system at the end of World War II, was at that time the be-all and end-all of the American people. Characterized by a mindset of conformity and deference to authority that had been inculcated in them from the first grade, Americans placed deep and abiding trust in the national-security state, never challenging its judgment, especially when it came to matters relating to communism and national security. If the Pentagon and the CIA said that it was necessary for the United States to fight the communists in Vietnam, then that was just the way it was.
The essence of slavery
Then along came Muhammad Ali, who said, No. Refusing to follow an order to report to his draft board after he was reclassified 1A, Ali made critical remarks that went to the core of the national-security state’s narrative, the most famous of which was, “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”
The dangerous implication, of course, was that neither did America.
He didn’t stop there. He also began telling audiences, “Why should me and other so-called Negroes go 10,000 miles away from home, here in America, to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who’s never bothered us and I will say directly: No, I will not go.”
No American was supposed to talk like that and especially not a black man. While it was considered somewhat permissible to challenge the war on grounds of conscientious objection or for religious reasons, which Ali also did, no one was supposed to challenge the central thesis of the national-security establishment — that America did in fact have a quarrel with them Vietcong and that if America didn’t go fight them Vietcong, the Reds would ultimately be running the federal government.
Owing both to his refusal to obey the draft order and his public pronouncements against the Vietnam War, Ali was considered clearly a threat to national security and had to be put down. After all, if more Americans were to lose their unquestioning faith in the Pentagon and the CIA, that could mean that the ever-growing flood of tax monies flowing into what President Eisenhower had called the military-industrial complex could be endangered.
The fact that Ali was black made him an even bigger threat to the national-security establishment and its war in Vietnam — much more serious than if he had been a white man. That’s because American blacks were the predominant form of cannon fodder that was being sent to Vietnam, because blacks generally lacked the resources to gain draft deferments that were being handed out to people who went to college and also because blacks lacked the political influence to join Reserve Units and National Guard units, which were being exempted from being sent to Vietnam. Imagine what could happen if American blacks starting listening to Ali and coming to the same conclusion — that they had no quarrel with them Vietcong.
Conscription and slavery
While the rest of America was vilifying and condemning Ali for his refusal to do his “patriotic” duty by complying with the draft, as Elvis Presley had “patriotically” done in the 1950s, there was one man who was steadfastly supporting Ali in his speeches — Martin Luther King.
As Hampton Dillinger points out in an excellent article in Salon entitled “When Muhammad Ali Took on America,” King was actually encouraging conscientious objection to serving in the military, telling audiences to “admire [Ali’s] courage. He is giving up fame. He is giving up millions of dollars to do what conscience tells him is right.” Considering King’s anti-draft, antiwar, and pro–civil-rights views expressed openly and publicly, it is certainly no wonder that the FBI and the national-security establishment considered him too to be a grave threat to national security and, therefore, spied on him, kept secret files on him, encouraged him to kill himself, and maybe even orchestrated his assassination, as the King family believe.
It is clear that Ali, King, and other American blacks were recognizing, even if subconsciously, that conscription was nothing more than a form of slavery.
Under conscription, the government orders a person to leave his regular life and report to a military installation to serve the government for some period of time. That is the very essence of slavery.
Let’s make this point starker with a series of hypotheticals. Suppose the state of Mississippi were to enact a law requiring all blacks to work on southern plantations from age 21 to age 65. Wouldn’t most of us consider that to be slavery?
Let’s assume though that the law required plantation owners to pay such workers double the minimum wage. Would that make a difference? Not to most people. Despite the pay, I think most of us would say that that’s still slavery and that blacks instead have the right to live their lives free of that type of law.
Suppose the law said that American blacks had to work on the plantation for a period of only two years, as a service to society. Would that change some people’s minds? It might for whites but my hunch is that most blacks would still see it as slavery. When people are forced to work for others, no matter the length of time, that is the essence of slavery.
Notice, however, that when the government conscripts blacks and everyone else to serve the Cold War-era, totalitarian apparatus known as the national-security establishment, many people’s perspectives change. At that point, they start waxing eloquent about “patriotism,” “national service,” the communist threat, the Muslim threat, the ISIS threat, or whoever else happens to be the official national-security state bugaboo of the day.
Daniel Webster certainly understood the evil, anti-freedom nature of conscription. In his excellent speech on conscription before the U.S. House of Representatives in 1814 (Google “Daniel Webster Speech on Conscription”), he stated,
Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life itself, not when the safety of their country and its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free Government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free Government. It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children by the provisions of our Government. It has been the labor of other men, at other times, to mitigate and reform the powers of Government by construction; to support the rights of personal security by every species of favorable and benign interpretation, and thus to infuse a free spirit into Governments not friendly in their general structure and formation to public liberty.
There is another factor to consider: Unlike the case of Elvis Presley, who was drafted during a time of peace, Ali was being drafted not just to provide “service” to the military by, say, mowing lawns at some general’s house. He was being seized and taken away from his promising boxing career to go thousands of miles away to kill people who had never attacked the United States. As Ali put it in his succinct way:
Why should me and other so-called Negroes go 10,000 miles away from home, here in America, to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who’s never bothered us and I will say directly: No, I will not go…. 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. This is the day when such evils must come to an end.
In other words, the same government that had supported a denial of freedom for black men in America through segregation was seizing those same black men, conscripting them into serving the national-security establishment, forcing them to go thousands of miles away, and placing them in a position of killing people who had never done anything to American blacks or any other Americans, or else be killed by them — and justifying it all in the name of “defending our freedom.”
Ali clearly recognized the irony — indeed, the hypocrisy — of conscripting people to fight and die for freedom. When a free people are genuinely threatened by others, no one needs to force them to fight — most of them will do so voluntarily and willingly. It is only in wars like the Vietnam War where people’s freedom is not being threatened that the citizenry must be forced to fight.
Registration
Today there are many Americans who think that Ali’s refusal to obey the government’s order to serve the military is no longer relevant, given that the U.S. government has had a volunteer army for decades.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The pro-slavery mindset that undergirds a system of conscription is equally applicable under a system of conditional conscription — that is, one in which people can be drafted whenever the government deems it necessary and advisable.
The fact that the government still wields the authority to draft people is perfectly manifested in the fact that federal law requires every American male to register for the draft upon reaching the age of 18. Young American women might soon be subject to the same draft registration requirement.
What happens if someone refuses to register, just as Ali refused to comply with his draft order? He or she is prosecuted for a felony offense and is punished with incarceration for many years in a federal penitentiary. Don’t forget, after all, that the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Ali’s favor not because it found the draft or the Vietnam War to be unconstitutional (which they clearly were) but because of Ali’s religious convictions as a Muslim.
Draft registration is just the first step in a military system that is based on conscription. Under a system in which the government wields the power to conscript people, the government remains in the superior, dominant position and the citizen remains in the subordinate, serf, or slave position, regardless of whether the draft registrants are actually being ordered to a military installation to serve the national-security establishment. The moment a citizen is required to register for the draft, either in peacetime or wartime, his position as serf or slave is established.
Muhammad Ali clearly understood that the draft, including draft registration, is just another form of slavery. Too bad Americans today, including many blacks and many young people, men and women alike, refuse to see that.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
Yo Bro,
You haven’t done YOUR research on Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali.
Clay was a member of the Nation of Islam, the Black Supremacist cult that taught that ALL Whites were devils. Clay was a dumb racist.
CLAY WAS A MULATTO:
What do I mean by “dumb racist”?
In 2009 the three-time heavyweight champion of the world was greeted with a civic reception in the Co Clare town of Ennis to commemorate the fact that his great grandfather – Abe Grady – came from Ennis.
After living on Turnpike Road, Grady emigrated to the United States in the 1860s where he made his home in Kentucky and married an African-American woman who had been freed from a life of slavery.
Grady’s wife would later give birth to a daughter – Odessa Lee. She then met and married Cassius Clay Sr and on January 17, 1942, Cassius junior was born. He was named both after his father and also after a famous Kentucky abolitionist.
Historian Dick Eastman traced Ali’s roots back to Grady and the woman he married.
In an article published some years ago Eastman wrote:
“An 1855 land survey of Ennis, a town in county Clare, Ireland, contains a reference to John Grady, who was renting a house in Turnpike Road in the centre of the town. His rent payment was fifteen shillings a month. A few years later, his son Abe Grady emigrated to the United States. He settled in Kentucky.”
However, in the last few years those Irish roots have become somewhat disputed. In a guide written by local historian Seán Spellissy, he states that Abe Grady was born in Kentucky and not Ennis as widely held.
“Abe Grady never set foot in Ireland. My research indicates that Abe’s father was more than likely from Crusheen,” Spellissy said.
He confirmed that a birth-cert for Abe Grady dating from 1865 has been located in Kentucky. However, this new evidence “doesn’t dilute Ali’s claims to be an O’Grady. His links to Clare are also quite solid. For Ennis, they are tenuous enough, but they have certain validity to Crusheen.”
Unsurprisingly Ennis Town Council was quick to comment, telling Spellissy to “put up or shut up.”
Shortly after, Ali paid a visit to Ennis where he unveiled a plaque outside his great-grandfather’s house before becoming the first freeman of the town in its 150,000 year existence.
THE WHITE ARABIAN PROPHET AND HIS BLACK SLAVES
Astonishingly, thousands of blacks in the United States have converted to Louis Farrakhan’s “Nation of Islam.” Farrakhan and his predecessors have targeted black American men for their own racial war against whites, Jews, and non-black minority groups. Farrakhan has used deceit and blatant lies to ensnare the African community to fight his war. Those who wish to follow Farrakhan’s own particular form of Islam should reconsider their misguided allegiance.
The following textual evidence demonstrates the indisputable historical fact that the original religion of Islam was vehemently racist toward those of black African lineage. The teachings of many of the U.S. black militant Islamic groups are considered apostate to the Islamic faith and doctrinal code of Muhammad. Many have mixed aberrant beliefs into their own version of Islam; they include teachings of reincarnation, the incarnation of Allah into an Islamic black leader, and numerous other unorthodox tenets. Yet, these are not considered true Islamic beliefs by the majority of Muslims.
MUHAMMAD WAS A WHITE MAN
There has been a myth circulated in the U.S. and other parts of the world that Muhammad was black. This assumption has no historical credibility. The Hadith gives ample evidence to the fact that Muhammad was a white man. One hadith clearly describes Muhammad’s physical appearance:
We were sitting with the prophet in the Mosque, when a man came riding on a camel. He let his camel kneel down in the Mosque, tied its foreleg and then said: Who amongst you is Muhammad? At that time the prophet was sitting amongst us leaning on his arm. We replied: This reclining white man on his arm.[1]
Further hadithic evidence states:
(1) “And a white man (person) (i.e. the Prophet) who is requested to pray for rain . . . “[2] (2) “He uncovered his thigh and I saw the whiteness of his thigh.”[3] (3) “When the Prophet prayed, he used to separate his arms from his body so widely that the whiteness of his armpits was seen.”[4] (4) “The Prophet was carrying earth with us on the day of the battle of al-Ahzab (confederates) and I saw the dust was covering the whiteness of his abdomen.”[5] From the overwhelming evidence, there can be no doubt that Muhammad was a white man.
MUHAMMAD OWNED BLACK SLAVES
The Hadith historically recorded Muhammad’s personal ownership of black slaves, “So I went to the upper room where the Prophet was and said to a black slave of his, will you get the permission of the Prophet for Umar (to enter)?”[6] The biographies of the prophet had named several of his black slaves as Bilal, Abu Hurairah, Usamah ebn Zaayed, and Rabbah. One particular male African slave, named Mahran, was re-named Safina (ship), by Muhammad. From the anonymous author’s book, Behind the Veil: Unmasking Islam, Mahran (Safina) recounted his ordeal:
“The apostle of God and his companions went on a trip. (When) their belongings became too heavy for them to carry, Muhammad told me, ‘spread your garment.’ They filled it with their belongings, then they put it on me. The apostle of God told me, ‘carry (it), for you are a ship.’ Even if I was carrying the load of six or seven donkeys while we were on a journey, anyone who felt weak would throw his clothes or his shield or his sword on me so I would carry that, a heavy load. The prophet told me, ‘you are a ship’” (refer to Ibn Qayyim, pp. 115-116; al-Hulya, vol. 1, p. 369, quoted from Ahmad 5:222).[7]
Muhammad’s Derogatory Statements against Black People
Repeatedly, Muhammad described Ethiopians as raisin heads and infidels.[8] He once dreamed of a black woman and assumed this was representative of an evil omen or coming epidemic.[9] Other traditions quoted him saying blacks were pug-nosed slaves. Since it is clear that Muhammad had an aversion toward Africans (blacks), his animosity of racial bigotry denoted the true nature of his disdain toward other ethnic people.
ISLAMIC SLAVERY IN HISTORY
Muhammad owned numerous slaves, both male and female. Muslims have followed his example and have aggressively bartered in the slave trade for almost 1400 years. This Islamic slave trade continues to this day. Historical evidence documents that the Arab slave trade was the major seller of blacks. One estimate claimed, during the period between 650 and 1900, Arab slave traders stole 14.4 million blacks from Africa.[10] Without respect to human rights, millions of black slaves have been sold around the world in direct correlation to Islamic oppression and unscrupulous dogma which contradicts the New Testament teachings.
When the Muslims first invaded Northern Africa, they gave the blacks a choice to follow Islam or become slaves to be sold. Trade between the Muslims and Europeans stemmed from the Islamic practice of slave trading. Many of the larger tribes throughout Africa aligned themselves with the Muslims to capture enemy tribes. Thus, Africans enslaved one another in collusion with the Muslim slave traders. Prior to the Islamic or European slave trade, Africa had a harsh slavery tradition among their own people for territorial conquest and power. Blacks were involved in slavery long before other nations conquered them; but Muslims amplified the practice to satiate a world market looking to fill its greedy appetite for cheap labor.
In Islamic dominated countries today, a large scale slave trade continues unabated, trading blacks, whites, oriental, other ethnic groups, and even children. Many of these children are used as sexual toys for the wealthier clientele. In the Sudan, Arab slave traders still buy and sell Dinka slaves to family and friends. Many of these slaves are transported to the wealthy nations of the Middle East to service the powerful oil sheiks.
Currently, the number of chattel slaves has been estimated in the tens of thousands. Some of the newly captured slaves attempt to escape and are often murdered as a consequence. Frequently, women and young girls are savagely raped and sodomized. The Qur’an sanctioned sex with any girl [at any age] that one owns, “And all married women are forbidden unto you save those (captives) whom your right hand possess” (Qur’an 4:24). Under Islam, a slave has no legal rights. He or she is cruelly treated and simply considered material possessions. Ibn Warraq has cited an astonishing report:
In the French magazine, L Vie (no. 2562, 6 Oct. 1994) 45,000 young black Africans per year are still kidnapped and reduced to slavery—as servants in the gulf states and the Middle East.[11]
Many of these slaves were acquired from Southern Sudan. The Islamic government of Sudan financially and often militarily assisted in the raping and subjugation of the black Christians of southern Sudan.
During the summer of 1992, I witnessed evidence of these atrocities on my third missionary trip to Africa. I was standing on a sidewalk in downtown Nairobi, Kenya and was approached by a well spoken middle-aged man. He asked for a cigarette but I said I was a missionary en route to Burundi and did not smoke. He began to relay to me his recent personal saga. To my surprise, he claimed to have walked all the way from Sudan to Nairobi and was planning to continue his quest and join a militia training camp inTanzania. His plans were to equip himself with the necessary training and weapons in order to eventually return and fight with the resistance movement in his home land of southern Sudan.
His family and friends were massacred by the Muslim forces from the North of Sudan. He pulled up his pants to reveal his ankles which were swollen larger than softballs due to the extreme distance he had already walked, perhaps anywhere from 600 to 900 miles. I was dumbfounded since the news media had covered little on these events. I gave him a few dollars and wished him good luck on his journey.
It was not until over a decade later, during the Darfur genocide, that the media and notable personalities began to point out the outrageous deeds by the Islamic perpetrators and their cohorts. Most established agencies have estimated 300,000 to 450,000 dead and up to 2 million displaced. In addition, vast numbers of these Sudanese victims were captured as slaves and often raped.
These are only a few examples of the subjugation of blacks by the Arab slave trade. Islam does not promote morality in relation to human rights. The Islamic practice of sexual abuse, slavery and racism has been well documented; it remains a religion of bigotry, intolerance, and war. Undoubtedly, the reason one-fifth the population of the world follows the Islamic system is due to a lack of historical knowledge and awareness of the issues disclosed in this documentation.
From Chapter 15 of Mecca, Muhammad & the Origins of Islam: A Candid Investigation Into the Origins of Islam.
[1] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 1, no. 63:35-6.
[2] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 2, no. 1008:47.
[3] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 1, no. 371:138.
[4] Ibid., 390:144.
[5] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 9, no. 7236:273; vol. 4, no. 2837:45.
[6] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 7, no. 5191:99; vol. 3, no. 2468:257.
[7] n.a., Behind the Veil, 154.
[8] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 1, no. 693:232; vol. 3, no. 2488:267.
[9] al-Boukhari, Hadith, vol. 9, no. 7038:141.
[10] Adams, Religion that is Raping America, 57.
[11] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, 205.
THE CASSIUS CLAY AKA MUHAMMAD ALI WE DIDN’T KNOW
MAY 13, 2017
Cassius was a great boxer but also a two-faced racist saying, “Blacks superior to blue-eyed devil white people”. Another icon crumbles.
From wnd.com dated 5/2/2017 entitled, “Muhammad Ali’s Racist, Mosque Tirades Revealed In New FBI Files“:
A release of FBI files on the late Muhammad Ali sheds damning new light on the legendary boxer’s views about race and politics after immersing himself in the teachings of the Nation of Islam.
Ali referred to Caucasians as “white devils” and “crackers” and told mosque worshipers that “black women have the best sons and daughters in the world,” according to Federal Bureau of Investigation records obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
Ali, known as Cassius Clay before converting to Islam, also said “programs of integration are useless,” that blacks want separation not integration and that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “swindle.”
The three-time heavyweight champ also told fellow Muslims during a mosque rant that “the so-called Negro is the original man and is superior to the white devil” and that he’d rather be with his own people than “blue-eyed devil white people,” JW reported.
“The FBI files present a picture of the late heavyweight champion that is clearly at odds with much of the image portrayed at the time of his death last year,” the JW report concludes in its evaluation of the files, adding:
His deep involvement with the Nation of Islam and its racially divisive rhetoric and behavior is part of a record that deserves to be revealed and contradicts Ali’s image as a civil rights icon. The hundreds of pages of documents are related to the FBI’s investigation of Ali for evading the draft and the government’s monitoring of the Nation of Islam, which is described by the agency as an “all-Negro, quasi-religious organization which espouses a line of violent hatred of the white race, Government, law and law enforcement.”
According the one FBI document, Ali told a crowd of Muslims gathered at a Washington, D.C., mosque that he preferred “dying outright” or going to jail to going into the Army.
At a Cleveland mosque, the boxer said the American flag “represented death and destruction,” but the “Muslim flag” represents “life and prosperity, justice for all black men.”
Ali was eulogized by former President Obama, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many other iconic civil rights leaders and media personalities after his death in June 2016.
As recently as July 2015, current Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan encouraged his followers to kill white cops in an explosive speech delivered at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Miami. Astonishingly, WND inquired at the time with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for South Florida, which told WND that Farrakhan’s instruction for followers to “stalk them and kill them and let them feel the pain that we are feeling” fell squarely within the realm of protected First Amendment speech and did not cross any legal boundaries.
The records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal the great threat the FBI perceived the Nation of Islam to be in the 1960s. And as a member of that organization, Ali was closely monitored by the agency as a “security matter” due to his associations with Nation of Islam leaders Elijah Mohammad and Malcolm X.
The Nation of Islam followed Mohammad’s interpretation of the Quran, the FBI records say, which taught that white people are “white devils” to be destroyed in a coming “War of Armageddon.”
In April 1964, Ali’s plan to travel to Muslim countries alarmed the FBI to the extent that agents searched his passport files and recorded that while in Accra, Ghana, Ali said he planned to bring four wives back to the U.S.
Jack Cashill, author of the Ali biography “Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook that Dazed Ali and Killed King’s Dream,” said Ali was transformed from a solid American kid into an anti-American extremist by the Nation of Islam.
“You don’t need the FBI to know that Ali held racist views,” Cashill told WND. “As late as 1975, Ali was telling Playboy magazine that he believed interracial couples should be lynched.”
Cashill was one of several guests last year on ESPN’s “The Stephen A. Smith Show” who spent an hour discussing Ali. NFL great Jim Brown was also one of the guests, along with Thomas Hauser, who wrote the definitive biography on Ali, “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times.”
“I said to Hauser, who really knows his stuff, it seems to me the left had no use for Ali, and it definitely had no interest in boxing, which is a working-class, sort of blue-collar sport, and the left had no interest in him until he dodged the draft.”
The theory Cashill puts forth in his book is that Cassius Clay had a chance to advance race relations well beyond any of his peers.
“But instead he joined Nation of Islam, and he was a pariah in the media until he rejected the draft,” Cashill said. “I think it was a phase he went through. He was not naturally a racist at all. And that’s why he was so attractive as a personality. He grew up in a nice sort of middle-class household in Kentucky.”
His contemporary, heavyweight boxer Joe Frasier, acutely felt the sting of Ali’s racist wrath. Ali called Frazier “ugly,” an “Uncle Tom” and a “gorilla.”
Who from that era can forget Ali leaning over Howard Cosell and saying: “It’s going to be a thrilla in Manila when I kill that gorilla.’”
Frazier reportedly never forgave Ali for the comments.
“He had a horrible 10-year period as a human being and the left celebrated him for it, all because he ducked the draft,” Cashill told WND.
‘America don’t have no future’
Ali gave a “curiously intemperate interview” to Playboy, as Cashill describes it, that would appear a month after his Manila fight.
In that interview, he continued to make the case for a separate African-American nation and declared: “America don’t have no future. America’s going to be destroyed.”
In his book “Sucker Punch,” Cashill said that kind of incendiary talk “was still rote Elijah Muhammad.”
“By the mid-1970s, such expressions of national self-loathing had ceased to be provocative. What did provoke in this newly feminized era was his view on sex and gender.”
Cashill further observed:
In comparing Muslims to the allegedly war-worshipping Christians, Ali made the point that Muslims “live their religion – we ain’t hypocrites.” He continued, “We submit entirely to Allah’s will. We don’t eat ham, bacon, or pork. We don’t smoke. And everyone knows we honor our women.” As he went on to explain, Muslim men honor their women by keeping them “in the background” and protecting them from the predations of other men, especially white men. “Put a hand on a Muslim sister,” said Ali, “and you are to die.” When asked if he believed that lynching was the answer to interracial sex, Ali answered, “A black man should be killed if he’s messing with a white woman.”
Ali came into his own as a sports icon during what Cashill calls the era of the “grievance narrative,” which emerged in the latter half of the 1960s following the death of John F. Kennedy. America’s black sports heroes would forever after be defined by their grievances of growing up “a descendant of slaves” and post-slavery oppression, rather than by their unique accomplishments.
In a series of articles about Ali, Cashill further writes:
The heroic possibilities of the grievance narrative did not fully emerge until the latter half of the decade after the death of John Kennedy and the escalation of the war in Vietnam. As told by those who have mythologized the sixties, the youth of America rose up to throw off the shackles of racial paternalism, sexual repression, and imperial ambition. In this context, heroism was achieved not so much through individual accomplishment as through individual awareness of grievances and a collective reordering of the society.
Ali came as close to fulfilling this idea of the hero as any public figure of that era. Indeed, as seen through the looking glass of this fabled decade, his life has taken on the quality of myth.
Fleeced by the mosque
Ali’s ex-wife, Sonji Roi, informed the FBI that the Nation of Islam received 80 percent of the boxer’s earnings. The records obtained by Judicial Watch also state that Ali was arrested for assault and battery in July 1960 at his parents’ home in Louisville, Kentucky, and that his mother witnessed the crime.
Judicial Watch had to sue the government to get the records, which are decades old but come to light as Ali’s family ironically uses his name and legacy to launch a national campaign to end racial and religious profiling.
Just weeks ago, according to JW, Ali’s second wife, Khalilah Camacho-Ali, and son, Muhammad Ali Jr., announced they are launching an anti-discrimination initiative called “Step into the Ring.”
The inspiration for the campaign came from getting detained and questioned at a South Florida airport where mother and son claim they were racially and religiously profiled.
“The Alis were returning from a Jamaican Black History month event in February and assert that federal immigration officers harassed them,” JW reported. “As part of their ‘Step into the Ring’ campaign, they traveled to Capitol Hill in March to make a plea to end racial and religious profiling.”
When Ali died in Phoenix, Arizona, last June, establishment media published glowing obituaries recounting his boxing exploits and status as a civil rights hero. One news outlet called Ali a “civil rights champion” and “an emblem of strength, eloquence, conscience and courage.”
Another wrote that, along with a fearsome reputation as a fighter, Ali spoke out against racism, war and religious intolerance.
Obama issued a statement saying Ali fought for everyone.
“He stood with King and Mandela,” Obama said in a White House statement, adding that the boxer “stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t.”
“His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing,” Obama said. “It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.”
But the other side of Ali’s life is apparent in the newly released FBI files, which, as Judicial Watch states, “paint a vastly different portrait of the boxer.”