X & Ali
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

 

Blacks complain in the US about white mistreatment and discrimination – often with verisimilitude. Missing from the picture is black mistreatment of those blacks not approved by the dominant white Establishment. How often does one see mainstream blacks shower praise on Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali? It is Martin Luther King who gets all the accolades.

Comes now a 2016 path-breaking book, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X,” by Professors Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith. It is a gripping narrative and meticulously researched passage of the stormy ’60s, wherein the dual legacies and bond between X and Ali left an enduring imprint on American civic life and the evolution of its civil rights.

In effect, blacks were ignoring facts of their second-class status in favor of the passive comfort zone of Christian tribalism. Black elites also pounced on both X and Ali, looking at them through Establishment eyes as dangerous subversives.

Malcolm X instilled in Ali the self-belief that it was Allah’s will that he would be world boxing champion. It was Muslim affiliation that sent Ali into the wilderness, taking away his rightfully earned heavyweight-boxing crown for 3-1/2 years during his prime time. It foretold by half a century the Islamophobia that plagues American civic life today.

Ali’s first impression of X: “He was fearless. That really attracted me.” Malcolm then said that Ali “possessed incredible potential to be something more than a boxer.”

Malcolm’s own life was a tale of redemption because he had emerged from the bottom heap and was transformed by Islamic tenets, which he saw as a natural beacon of hope for the black man. When Malcolm X later went to Mecca, he grasped the transcendental inclusivity of Islam’s message when he witnessed all races as one gathered together and bowing before the Almighty.

The book substantiates how “Malcolm spoke for the powerless, the downtrodden, the voiceless.” Ali, too, had defiance and “never behaved like a subservient one…. More than any other athlete, his life fused the political upheavals of the age. His entire boxing career was defined by the social and political movements of the decade.”

The friendship between X and Ali flamed hot so fast and flamed out so fast. But not before it rocked America forever.

While it lasted, it was an epic bond between two men who went on to become global icons, inspiring Mandela, Nasser, Nkrumah, and, of course, millions of Pakistanis.

According to the authors, “no one articulated black rage against American hypocrisy and the failures of democracy more strongly than Malcolm did.”

Malcolm posited: “We need to expand the civil rights struggle to a higher level – to the level of human rights…Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”

Reflecting back, on page 309, 40 years after the assassination of Malcolm X, Ali had this realization: “I wish I’d been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry, that he was right about so many things…. Malcolm X was a great thinker and even greater friend. I might never have become a Muslim if it hadn’t been for Malcolm.”