{"id":74702,"date":"2016-06-06T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=74702"},"modified":"2016-06-06T11:03:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T10:03:32","slug":"muhammad-ali-17-jan-1942-3-jun-2016-champion-of-the-human-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/06\/muhammad-ali-17-jan-1942-3-jun-2016-champion-of-the-human-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Muhammad Ali (17 Jan 1942 \u2013 3 Jun 2016): Champion of the Human Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"muhammad-ali-featured2\"<\/a>4 Jun 2016 – <\/em>Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942, no one would have known that he would not only become the Boxing Champion of the World 3 times, but also a champion of racial & religious rights as well as a champion of the struggle against armed conflict.<\/p>\n

He is the greatest boxer who ever lived.\u00a0 More important is the fact that he did something 99% of us don\u2019t dream about doing.\u00a0 He was sentenced to jail for standing up for what he believed in.\u00a0 Time as well as the historical record of human consciousness have proven him correct.<\/p>\n

The story is simple.\u00a0 On April 28, 1967\u00a0Muhammad Ali made headlines for refusing to be drafted into the U.S. Army on the grounds of being a conscientious objector.\u00a0 Arguably never in human history through a single act of civil disobedience had a public figure wagered so much. Ali was stripped of his boxing championship. He could not compete in the ring for three years, and his entire way of life was threatened.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther King, who was also a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War said that, \u201cIn the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but rather the silence of our friends\u201d\u00a0 Ali also heard this silence louder than any gavel that brought down his prison sentence.<\/p>\n

\"Muhammad<\/a>

Muhammad Ali Conscientious Objector Arrested. room.live-av.info<\/p><\/div>\n

Muhammad Ali was as brave as any man who went to Vietnam.\u00a0 That is in no way intended to offend anyone who did.\u00a0 Many lives were lost in Vietnam and Muhammad Ali had a moral compass that guided him to the simple truth that it was not right.\u00a0\u00a0 He was not astute academically per say but he was as fiercely intelligent as he was competitive and dominant in the ring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy 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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here.<\/p>\n

I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.<\/p>\n

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”<\/p>\n

His grounds on religious beliefs not to serve in the U.S. Army also proves to bare out how utterly misunderstood Islam was (and still is) by many.<\/p>\n

In 1971 The Supreme Court reversed his conviction.\u00a0 He went on to become champion again and again. Later in life, his demonstration of bravery once again shone brighter than his accomplishments in the ring by standing up to Parkinson\u2019s disease with such determined optimism.\u00a0 People closest to Ali understood this every day.\u00a0 This courage and spirit was on display in 1996 when the former Gold Medalist lit the torch to start the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.\u00a0 He was truly an ambassador to the world and was well liked by everyone everywhere.<\/p>\n

President Barrack Obama, said of Ali\u2019s passing, \u201cMuhammad Ali shook up the world.\u00a0 \u2013 And the world is better for it.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed it is!<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Daniel Horgan is former student at the European University Center of Peace Studies.\u00a0 He studied under Johan Galtung and the late and much beloved Dietrich Fischer at E.P.U.\u00a0 Dietrich shared the same desire for peace and the same generosity of spirit that Ali shared with the human race.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Jun 2016 – Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942, no one would have known that he would not only become the Boxing Champion of the World 3 times, but also a champion of racial & religious rights as well as a champion of the struggle against armed conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}