President Obama Saturday offered a tribute to Muhammad Ali that referred several times to Ali’s Muslim conversion and asserted that the boxing legend helped usher in an increasingly diverse America.
Obama in recent days has zeroed in on what he believes is Donald Trump’s divisiveness, and his statement on Ali seems at least in part an effort to enhance his argument against Trump and such things as Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants.
“I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was — still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden,” Obama wrote.
Obama continued: “‘I am America,’ [Ali] once declared. ‘I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me — black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.'”
He shook up the world, and the world’s better for it. Rest in peace, Champ. pic.twitter.com/z1yM3sSLH3
— President Obama (@POTUS44) June 4, 2016
Obama noted that after Ali was banned from boxing and nearly sent to jail for refusing military service due to religious objections, “Ali stood his ground,” Obama wrote. “And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.”
Obama made little reference to Ali’s boxing skills, but noted he has a pair of Ali’s gloves in his study off the Oval Office beneath a photo of Ali towering over Sonny Liston.
“Muhammad Ali shook up the world,” Obama said. “And the world is better for it.”
