Chicago, Oct 21: Muhammad Ali, who has been suffering from Parkinson's disease for almost 30 years now, maybe counting his last days if sources in the boxing legend's family are to be believed. The 72-year-old American is critically ill.
Rumours about Ali's poor health started circulating when he did not attend a Hollywood premiere of a new movie about his life, 'I am Ali', last week.
Interestingly, news of Ali struggling for life comes at the same time when two of his strongest rivals, Britain's Joe Bugner, 64 and Leon Spinks, 61, struggle with serious heart and stomach ailments. Spinks has undergone multiple surgeries recently.
Joe Frazier, one of Ali's rivals during his boxing days, had once said, "The trouble with him is that he doesn't know how to die," at the time Ali refused to retire.
The good part about Ali's story, however, is that he has managed to outlive most of the 53 opponents he has faced during his career. In fact, many of Ali's opponents died a brutal death. While Sonny Liston died from a drugs overdose, Argentinian Oscar Bonavena was shot dead outside a brothel in the US state of Nevada.
Ali's daughter Hana is optimistic that the legendary boxer is going to live. "I call him in the mornings, every morning, he speaks the best in the mornings. You could actually hear his soft sweet voice," Hana had recently said. "He jokes, he kids around about making a comeback even now today. So he would want the world to know that he enjoys being Muhammad Ali."
One of the first public figures in America to be identified with Islam was boxer Muhammad Ali, to whom more media attention has been given than to any other athlete. He has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated more than thirty times, and his name and face are known to people all over the world.
Journey to Islam
Ali, a three times World Heavyweight Champion, embraced Islam in 1965. "I have had many nice moments in my life. But the feelings I had while standing on Mount Arafat (just outside Makka, Saudi Arabia) on the day of the Hajj (the Muslim pilgrimage), was the most unique. I felt exalted by the indescribable spiritual atmosphere there as over one and a half million pilgrims invoked God to forgive them for their sins and bestow on them His choicest blessings. It was an exhilarating experience to see people belonging to different colours, races and nationalities, kings, heads of state and ordinary men from very poor countries all clad in two simple white sheets praying to God without any sense of either pride or inferiority. It was a practical manifestation of the concept of equality in Islam," said Ali in an interview a few years ago.
Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, of a Baptist mother and Methodist father. He started boxing at a young age so as to be able to buy his parents a car; by the time he was in his twenties, many considered him the greatest fighter of all time. After winning the Rome Olympics in 1960, he became the darling of the American public-handsome, charming, and greatly successful.
Eighteen days before he defeated Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world, Clay joined the "Black Muslims," influenced by Malcolm X. After becoming Muslim he seems visibly to have changed, bragging less about his accomplishments and stressing the importance of Islam as a spiritual force in his life.
Adopting the Muslim name Muhammad Ali, he has always insisted, was one of the most important occurrences in his life. He did it, however, at a time when the Nation of Islam was unpopular in the United States. The boxing commission was furious, and from a hero Ali quickly became the object of suspicion.
In 1967, in opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces on the grounds that he was a minister in the religion of Islam. The New York State Athletic Commission suspended his boxing license and withdrew his recognition as champion.
Muhammad Ali's later career has been extremely checkered, and it is generally recognized that he fought well beyond the time that his physical condition allowed. He was finally diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.
Meanwhile, he also did a great deal of public speaking about his life and about Islam, while the government continued surveillance on him as a member of the Nation of Islam. Never a strong advocate of the Nation's racist doctrines, he did preach racial pride and became a hero of Black Americans.
He has been a significant contributor to the financing of Islamic institutions such as Masjid al-Faatir, the first mosque built from the ground up in the city of Chicago. The truly great men of history, he has said, want not to be great themselves but to help others and be close to God.
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