“We thank God for him,” Talib Shareef, president and imam of the Masjid Muhammad mosque in Washington, told a gathering of Muslim leaders who honoured Ali in Washington on Saturday, a day after he died in a Phoenix hospital at age 74. “America should thank God for him. He was an American hero.”
From the turmoil of civil rights and black Muslim movements of the 1960s to the darkest days after 11 September, 2001, Ali was a hero that US Muslims could share with part of the American mainstream.
Muslims remembered Ali for many familiar reasons, hailing him as a champion of social justice, a lifelong supporter of charitable works and an opponent of the US war in Vietnam.
Moreover, they said, he was a Muslim that a largely Christian country came to admire, even if Ali shocked and scared much of US society after he joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay in 1964.
“When we look at the history of the African-American community, one important factor in popularizing Islam in America is Muhammad Ali,” Warith Deen Mohammed II, son of the former Nation of Islam leader, said in a statement.
With some 3.3 million adherents in the United States, Muslims make up about 1 percent of the population, largely immigrants and African-Americans who have embraced the religion.
