Conversation — part IX

Muhammad Ali: I have a small lecture I would like you to hear. Like you said, the “Golden Gloves” were once my goal. I got them. I was an amateur boxer at the Olympics and then a professional boxer. I found with all of this — the money and the so-called fame — still I felt hungry. Something was missing. I was raised in the Baptist church and we, as black people of America, have problems. We have our problems as the people of India have their problems and the people of Puerto Rico have their problems. I understand that God, Allah, or whatever you call Him, has sent prophets to certain parts of the world to inspire people who needed it. Like Jesus was sent to the people of Israel and the prophet Muhammad to Arabia.

I used to sit in church and I used to always feel that something was wrong in what I was seeing. The preacher was doing all kinds of things outside the church, and I said to myself, “This man is not acting like a man of God.” I was a little boy in Kentucky, twelve years old, with no knowledge of Islam or anything. Well, God is in all of us. Whether we believe in a religion or not, something inside tells us that this is right or that is wrong. Birds, animals — I am sure they pray in some kind of way or they know that there is something wiser. I knew that this was not the right place for me to get this knowledge. They had Jesus Christ painted as a white man with blond hair and blue eyes at the Lord’s Supper. And Peter, Paul, Mary and all the angels were white. Chinese die, Mexicans die, Indians die. If there is a Heaven, people from all races go there if they’re good. But all the people who went to Heaven, according to pictures, were white people.

Tarzan was the King of the Jungles in Africa. He was a white man, swinging around on limbs of trees. Batman, Superman, Miss America were always white. The good guys like the Lone Ranger in the Westerns rode white horses. White was always portrayed as good and black as bad. The black cat was bad luck. If I threaten you, I am going to blackmail you, or if you get put out of a fraternity group you get blackballed. Black was always identified with bad.

I have travelled the world over, and I find this Christian white supremacy teaching wherever I go. In Puerto Rico, the white Puerto Rican does a lot better than your black Puerto Rican. The black ones are looked down upon; they get the worst jobs. Your white Cubans are all brothers, but the darker complexioned ones are not. This European, Caucasian mentality has now spread over the world. In Egypt, the black ones are the servants. Why? Because when the white American came to countries such as this and mated with the women, he would only educate the babies which were more like him. He kept the dark ones illiterate; so today you have a problem.

I have asked a few Puerto Ricans here questions. I’m curious. I said, “Do you all have problems?” They said, “Oh, problems here are worse.” This happens in every country I go to. Why do you think? Christianity. You’ve had the white people with all the money, all the airplanes, all the hotels, all the power, and the blacks as the servants. We had to wait until we died to go to Heaven and if we weren’t good, we would go to hell and be burned up. But the same people who taught us this didn’t seem to believe it themselves. They wanted money, they wanted earthly things; but they told us go to church and follow Jesus. They went to Africa with the Bible and the cross. Now the Africans are waking up and they're running Christianity out because the church is taking all the wealth.

So, as a little boy, I just knew something was wrong, and my goal was to help my people. Now, I want to help all people who want to be helped, regardless of race, creed or colour. I used to cry at night in bed. I used to burst into tears thinking about God and the love of God, how I wanted to help people and how I wished more people could see what they were missing. You just feel bad to realise that there are not many of us thinking like this. I used to lie in the bed at night and cry when black people like Martin Luther King were marching and getting water poured on them and getting beaten up. I always wanted to do something to free my people; I always wanted to serve God. But I was confused — one little black boy in Louisville, Kentucky, in America. There were Catholics, Baptists, Holy Rollers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, God and Christ — all kinds of religions. I was confused, you understand. I didn’t know what was right. I had no guidance, no teacher.

Finally, one day I walked into a Muslim mosque in Miami, Florida, and heard this Islamic teaching. I heard how we have been robbed of our knowledge, our language, our nationality. The worst-off people on the planet mentally and spiritually are the black ones of America. Chinese are named after China, Cubans are named after Cuba, Indians are named after India, Puerto Ricans are named after Puerto Rico, Hawaiians are named after Hawaii, Mexicans are named after Mexico, Germans are named after Germany. All people are named after a country. Now what country is named Negro?

We were named after white people. Negroes got names like George Washington, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Jones, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Clay. Cassius Clay was a white slave-master. You know American history. If a white man had five slaves and his name was Jones, the slaves were branded Jones’ property. If you were sold to Mr. Washington, you were Washington’s property. Slaves were identified as servants of certain masters. Well, today we’re free, but we still have our slave names. So now there’s a big awakening in America of all these ex-slaves who want to find out who their ancestors were and get names to fit them. I mean, if an Indian were named Mr. Robert Jones, it wouldn’t look right. So all people can be distinguished by their name. Mr. White Cloud or Silver Moon or Morning Star is Indian, Mr. Khrushchev is Russian. We identify people by their names, but the American black man can’t be identified in this way.

Also, we were robbed of our language. You speak another language and you also speak English. America has people from practically everywhere in the world. Although they have never seen their countries, they still know some of their language. But not the black man in America! He is the only one that’s been robbed of all his language, robbed of his name, robbed of his religion, robbed of his God. So you have a man who is dead mentally who calls himself a Negro.

About Allah we’ve been taught in the person of the Honourable Elijah Muhammad, who came to America in 1930. He was a wise man inspired by God to plant the seed of truth to wake up these mentally dead people who call themselves Negroes, who have been here for three or four hundred years without true knowledge of God or true knowledge of themselves or anybody else. That was the Muslim programme. Now it has grown to about two million strong and we’ve got mosques in every city in America. This is why I am who I am today. I walked into a Muslim Temple and heard that Cassius Clay was not my name. I found out that Islam was the religion of my people in Asia and Africa before we were brought to America, and still is today. I found out that I shouldn’t eat pork and certain meats, and one day I would like to be like you, a vegetarian, which is the best. All this knowledge came from the Elijah Muhammad.

I found out that America is not my country. We asked why we should go to war when the Japanese never lynched us, the Viet Cong never lynched us. America might go to war with India. America might go to war with a Muslim nation. I can’t pick up a rifle and shoot my brothers because America is at war with a Muslim nation. I said, “Take me to jail.” I wouldn’t go to Viet Nam. Those Asiatic people who have been oppressed have never bothered me. And America might have some selfish reason there, so she wants me to go to war to kill off the Viet Cong. I’d rather go to jail than to kill.

See, if it weren’t for the Honourable Elijah Muhammad’s Islamic programme and his teaching, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. If I were a Christian and my name was Clay and I was eating pork and wasn’t religious, I wouldn’t talk to you nor would you want to talk to me. What has made you want to see me is what you’ve been reading about me. What you’ve been seeing and feeling in me is the Islamic teaching. Why am I what I am? Why am I great? Why am I world-acclaimed? Why can I attract people such as yourself? Why did I recognise you? Because of the Islamic teaching. I’ve made 37 million dollars in the past five years, and I’m contracted for 25 million this year. Yet still I’ll give it all up and I’ll give up the championship before I’ll quit fighting for God’s cause and helping little people. I can give it all up and go to jail if it means turning down Allah and religion.

What I’m saying is that it’s unusual for a man of my calibre and world fame to even want to talk about these things. I’m in Heaven now; I’m in peace here. But Frank Sinatra, Sidney Poitier, John Wayne, all the big movie stars that America has produced — what we are doing here is the last thing they would want to do. You’re the last man they would want to talk to. Once they get so much wealth and so many worldly things, they forget about God. Mostly poor people come to religion, people who want something after they die because they feel that they can’t get it now. But the man who owns this hotel, the man you see out on the beach today who owns buildings in New York City — these men don’t care about God. And God never came after these men, according to the stories. God always went to the poor people. Jesus, God’s prophets, they all went to the little people. The rest of them were too proud; they had too much.

You remember Hazrat Ali? He was a great warrior of the Prophet Muhammad. He was the King of a nation. I cried when I read his story. He rode a donkey, he wore old coarse clothes, he slept on the ground, he wouldn’t eat much. Religious men like to fast a lot because when they get hungry they feel for the poor people. Hazrat was a king and the commander of armies, but although he was the richest man in the world at that time, he walked the streets helping people. The only time he ever became angry was when he found out that his daughter was saving some money. He said, “People are out there hungry and you are here saving that money. Go give that money to somebody who is hungry.” He died in a mosque, praying. Somebody hit him over the head with something, and he was drenched in blood. The Muslims went and caught the man who hit him and brought him back in ropes. And they asked Hazrat what they should do with him. Hazrat said, “Why do you treat your fellow human being so cruelly? Can’t you see his ropes are too tight? Loosen his ropes.” Then he died. This man had hit him and he said, “His ropes are too tight.” He still didn’t hate him for it.

When I was a little boy crying in my bed at home, wanting to help my people, looking for God, I used to go out in the night and wait for God to tell me what to do. White people were killing black people and lynching them and hanging them from trees and beating up our women during demonstrations and civil rights marches. I always wanted to do something. I wanted to get a rifle and get on top of the building and just shoot all those evil people, but that wasn’t the way. So I used to want God to come to me. I always used to say, “God, where are You at? Something’s wrong. I know the preacher is not telling me the truth. I see the Pope of Rome saying he loves, but still they have the world enslaved and the blacks are catching hell.” I always knew something was wrong.

So all through my life I’ve been looking to meet people like you, but I didn’t know it. Step by step, like you say, you go higher and higher. I did. First I went to the church — I went to the Catholic church, I went to the Baptist church, I went to Black Panther meetings, I went to radical black groups, but I never saw what I wanted.

Then I walked into this Islamic Temple and everybody was so peaceful. The sisters had on long dresses. They were sitting on one side, the men were sitting on the other side. No alcohol, no drinking, no smoking, no pork products; everybody was so clean. In America this is unusual among black people because they were always fighting and killing and drinking whiskey. But the Muslims were the cleanest of all the people and I said this is what I want.

One thing led to another. I started spouting poetry. I started checking on people like Hazrat Inayat Khan. And then I would spout some of his stuff, like the heart talk I gave at Harvard. That’s from his book. Everybody liked it. You read about it. So everything has its purpose in life. Hazrat said everything is created to accomplish a purpose. Trees have a purpose, the moon has a purpose, rain and snow have a purpose, insects, flies, cats, dogs, rats, horses, everything Allah created has a purpose. Regardless of how large or how small, it was put here for a purpose. And it is the knowing of that purpose which enables every soul to fulfil it. A wise man is he who knows his life’s purpose. Ten men with the knowledge of their purpose are more powerful than a thousand working from morning till night. So my purpose is to be a spiritual man, to do all I can to help God, to help God’s creatures and to meet other men such as yourself who can teach me more about God; and also to be a world champion so that when I talk, the world will hear me, so little minority groups can feel proud and say, “We have a champion.”

Tears came to my eyes; I had to keep from crying when you played that song about me. I was waiting for the day when the world would recognise me as a boxer and I could take that fame and go and spread God’s Word with it. In other words, boxing introduces me to the audience. Athletes get a lot of recognition. Football players get more recognition than men of God. I admire you. I see you as a great, great man. I want to be like you, but I overheard a man in the hotel lobby ask, “Who is he?” He doesn’t understand. But they all recognise me.

You’re welcome if you want to watch me box today in the gymnasium. You could come at two o’clock. Today in the gymnasium there’ll be about three or four hundred people from all races. I could take the mike and I could say, “I have a brother here that you have to hear. I can’t explain, but I wouldn’t have him here if he didn’t have a message and I would like for him to talk for fifteen minutes.” Introduce yourself, and then after this I will continue training. Three hundred people will sit there and listen to you because we live in a world where they recognise athletes, they recognise people with money, they recognise fame. I always wanted God to put me up here in this world so I could turn around and then tell the world about God.

You go fishing, you put the bait out to catch the fish. He sees a worm and bites it, but he gets a hook. He didn’t think about that. But he got caught. The worm was the bait. I look at myself as bait, see? I’m out here dangling and everybody is saying, “Muhammad Ali! Oh, he’s the greatest,” and then we say we are going to talk to them. After they come to see me, they get hooked with the truth and the love of God, and they go away saying, “I want to hear more of this.” There are many fish out there if they just had a chance to hear it. But the trouble is getting them together where they will listen. But I could be the bait.

Sri Chinmoy: That is most kind of you. It is your heart’s magnanimity, your heart’s boundless magnanimity that is speaking.

Muhammad Ali: Right.