ALI

This is an interview of Howard Bingham of READER DIGEST with Muhammad Ali when he was already 60 years old.

Bingham: When you became a Muslim, the religion was perceived as anti-white. Has that changed?

Ali: The real Islam comes from Mecca. All people are God’s people. The devil can be any color.

Bingham: Do you know some black devils?

Ali: A lot of them.

Bingham: Has it become easier to be Muslin in America?

Ali: Yes. When I first accepted the religion, you’d say you were Muslim, people thought that’s funny. Now there’s not half the trouble.

Bingham: How do you feel about different religions?

Ali: Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams. They have different names, but all contain water. Religion has different names but all contain truth.

Bingham: What does your faith means to you?

Ali: It means a ticket to heaven. One day we’re going to die and God’s going to judge us, our good and bad deeds. If the bad outweighs the good, you go to hell; if the good outweighs the bad, you are going to heaven.

        I’m thinking about the judgment day and how you treat people wherever you go. Help somebody through charity, because when you do, it’s been recorded.

        I go to parties, to see good-looking girls. I take a box of matches with me. I see a girl I want to flirt with, which is a sin, so I light my matches, touches his finger- ohh, hell hurts worse than this. Buy a box of matches and carry them with you. Put one on your finger and see how long you can hold it. Just imagine that’s going to be hell. Hell’s hotter, and for eternity.

Bingham: What was your best fight ever?

Ali: The fight against famous Joe Frazier in Manila.

Bingham: Which loss hurt most?

Ali: Amos Johnson in the Pan Am trials in 1959.

Bingham: Did you ever win a fight that you thought you’d lost?

Ali: No.

Bingham: Did you ever lose a fight that you thought you’d won?

Ali: No

Bingham: Should boxing be banned, like so many people advocate?

Ali: They said it should be banned because it’s too brutal. Football is brutal, and wrestling. Motor-car racing. The reason they think its bad is black people control it.

Bingham: Knowing what you know now, would you go back and change anything?

Ali: In boxing I would do everything the same, wouldn’t change nothing.

Bingham: What about taunting Joe Frazier?

Ali: Joe Frazier, I‘d do everything the same, wouldn’t change nothing.

Bingham: All those years back, you were a kid who believed in himself enough to tell everyone that one day you would become champion of the world. Where did your confidence come from?

Ali: I had it in my heart. I believed in myself, and had confidence. I knew how to do it and had natural talent and I pursued it.

Bingham: Now, after you were older, who influenced your life and the beliefs that you have?

Ali: After I started boxing, Sugar Ray Robinson. And my idol was a man named Elijah Muhammad. His Islamic teaching is what made me so confident.

Bingham: What people have inspired you- or who is the most unforgettable character you’ve ever met?

Ali: Malcolm X. He said courageous things, wasn’t afraid of nothing. He was a good speaker about black people and their condition and treatment by whites.

Bingham: Your wife, Lonnie, Asaad’s mother… you’ve been with her longer than any of your first three wives. What does she mean to you?

Ali: Everything.

Bingham: You’ve said that some people are chosen to spread a message and that you were chosen to spread the word of Allah. What exactly do you mean by that?

Ali: For an example, black people called themselves Negroes for hundred years, and now they say Afro Americans. But that started after they heard Elijah Muhammad. They didn’t accept all Elijah said, but the part about Afro Americans they did. Chinese have Chinese names; Cubans have Cuban names, Germans after Germany, Indians after India – all people by the name of their country. There’s no country called Negro.

        When I heard that, It shocked me. We have our names for Chinese. Castro- here comes a Cuban. But here comes Jones of Washington, he doesn’t know who he is. He got slave names. Negroes named George Washington.

        So we took- we have- slave names. Muhammad Ai is Muslim.

Bingham: What does Muhammad Ali mean?

Ali: Muhammad Ali worthy of praise and praiseworthy and Ali means the most high. Clay means dirt. When I heard that. Then everything came together. We’re taught to love white, hate black. The color black meant getting put out, you are being blackballed. Black was bad. There’s blackmail. They made angel cake white and devil’s food chocolate. Think about that, angel’s food white and devil’s food chocolate. They ugly duckling is the black duckling. Black magic.

        I mean, black is good. In business you want it black. Blackberry juice- the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. The rich dirt is black. Black ain’t bad. The greatest baseball players are black. The greatest football players are black.

Bingham: Everything but boxers, huh?

Ali: The greatest boxers are black.

Bingham: What were your thoughts when you lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta?

Ali: It showed that people in the past didn’t hold it against me because here I am rejecting the Vietnam War, joining the Islamic religion, and then, of all people, raising the flag. They were thinking of me to light the Olympic flame, so that was a good thing.

Bingham: Do athletes have a responsibility to become role models for people?

Ali: They don’t have to, but it’s good if they do because then the kids look up to them and wants to be like them. It’s good to be an example for them I the way they live.

Bingham: Are you a role model that people look up to?

Ali: I’ve been told so.

Bingham: Why?

Ali: Because I’m daring, bold courageous!

Bingham: If there was one thing that you could make happen in this world, what would it be?

Ali: I’d find a cure for cancer.

Bingham: What disease do you have?

Ali: Parkinson’s.

Bingham: Have you ever asked yourself “Why me?” for no condition. There’s so much good, I’ve been so blessed. God tries you. Some things are good. Some things are bad. All of them are trials.

Bingham: How would you like to be remembered?

Ali: He took a few cups of love, one teaspoon of patience, one tablespoon of generosity, one pint of kindness, and stirred it up well and serves it to each and every deserving person.