by JONATHAN EIG
Jonathan Eig, the author of the biography “Ali,” about boxer Muhammad Ali, holds a letter that Ali wrote to his wife, Khalilah Camacho-Ali, detailing his conversion to Islam, in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. PHOTO/Allison Shelley/The Washington Post
Muhammad Ali’s conversion to Islam, in many ways, defined his career and legacy as a fighter with conviction. He went on to become an icon for American Muslims.
Just years following his conversion in 1964, he got in a fight that prompted him to write down some reflections on what drew him to the faith in the first place.
It wasn’t a fight in the boxing ring, but an argument at home with his wife, Belinda.
Ali was out of control, Belinda said. He had lost all traces of humility. He was acting like he was God. You may call yourself the greatest, she told him, but you’ll never be greater than Allah.
Like a schoolteacher, Belinda instructed Ali to sit down and write an essay. She asked him to write about why he became a Muslim. Ali obliged, taking out blank sheets of paper and a blue pen and beginning to write.
Belinda now goes by the name Khalilah Camacho-Ali. When I interviewed her for my biography of the legendary boxer, she gave me the essay. On Wednesday, I took it to the National Museum of African American History and Culture to see whether curators would include it in their collection.
I think it belongs there — not only because it reveals a great deal about Ali’s character, but also because it teaches us about the religious life of one of the country’s best-known African American athletes and activists. His story reminds us that even the most powerful spiritual journeys can have humble beginnings.
In the letter, Ali writes of his teenage days in Louisville when he was still known as Cassius Clay Jr. He says he was leaving a roller skating rink and scanning the sidewalk for pretty girls when he noticed a man in a black mohair suit selling newspapers for the Nation of Islam.
Ali had heard of the Nation and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, but he had never given serious thought to joining the group, which used some elements of Islam to preach black separatism and self-improvement.
Ali took a newspaper, mostly to be polite, but a cartoon caught his eye. It showed a white slave owner beating his black slave and insisting the man pray to Jesus. The message was that Christianity was a religion forced on slaves by the white establishment. “I liked that cartoon,” Ali wrote. “It did something to me. And it made sense.”
It’s interesting that Ali didn’t answer his wife by writing in spiritual terms about why Islam attracted him. He wrote about it with pragmatism. The cartoon awakened him, and he realized that he hadn’t chosen Christianity. He hadn’t chosen the name Cassius Clay. So why did he have to keep those vestiges of slavery? And if he didn’t have to keep his religion or his name, what else could he change?
In 1964, when he won the heavyweight championship, he publicly declared his conversion and made a personal declaration of independence: “I believe in Allah and in peace,” he said. “I don’t try to move into white neighborhoods. I don’t want to marry a white woman. I was baptized when I was 12, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not a Christian anymore. I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”
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