Muhammad Ali laid to rest after hometown procession

This isn’t my opinion.

“I’ve been crying all week”, he said.

“He told me ‘I’m going to be the heavyweight champion of the world, ‘” Montgomery said. The only true satisfaction comes from honoring and worshipping God…. According to CNN, the processional, which transported Ali’s body to the cemetery, drove by all of the important spots in Ali’s life in Louisville.

“I’ve labored to come up with a way to describe the legend”, he continued, before saying he’d settled on a lightning bolt.

Ali himself decided years ago that his funeral would be open to ordinary fans, not just VIPs. Later that night he went to Ali’s darkened room, and told his idol that he loved him.

He said the boxing great “dared to affirm the power and capacity of African-Americans” and infused them with a “sense of somebodiness”.

They were kissing it, touching it, shadow boxing with it, running alongside it the way the teenage boxer used to chase buses along the same stretches of tarmac, and filling the hot Kentucky air with a single chant of “Ali, Ali, Ali”.

Photos from the sombre event depicted Smith, who portrayed the fighter in 2001 biopic Ali, and retired boxers Tyson and Lewis among the pallbearers loading Ali’s casket, which was covered with a black and gold cloth, into a hearse, as the funeral procession got underway, 90 minutes behind schedule.

The tributes also came from other family members, including daughter Maryum Ali, one of Ali’s nine children. My father’s name is Ali and my uncle’s name is Muhammad so he was basically like family in my mind. His picture hung on the walls of homes and shops across the Middle East as if he were from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. And the way the people in those countries, and so many others, talked about him, he might as well have been. “He was the most ideal athlete you ever saw and those were his own words”.

Learner’s comments appeared to take issue with the accusations of religious extremism foisted upon the world’s estimated 1.6 billion Muslims following a string of high-profile terrorist attacks in global capitals in over the past year. Hearing “Jenazah” and “Allahu Akbar” uttered on American television in a positive light was surreal. “The fact that we were different wasn’t celebrated, it was held against us”. Ali made being a Muslim relevant. “His name is Muhammad Ali”.

Religious and political leaders joined celebrities, sports stars and tens of thousands of ordinary people on Friday in bidding farewell to Muhammad Ali, the boxing champion who jolted America with his showmanship and won worldwide admiration as a man of conviction.

Catch Billy Crystal’s piece “15 Rounds” below…

“Muhammad’s desire was that the ceremonies of this past week reflect the traditions of his Islamic faith”, said Muhammad’s wife, Lonnie Ali, when she spoke at Friday’s memorial service.

“We will not tolerate politicians or anyone else putting down Muslims and blaming Muslims for a few people”, said Lerner.

Ali’s dying wishes were nothing new.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun remembered Ali with an impassioned speech. “I want to be an evangelist like Billy Graham, Rex Humbard and Oral Roberts”. “And that really, I think, is what made him beloved to the rest of the world at a time when we’ve gone through lots of conflicts”.

“It was a serious time in American history”, Lewis said.

The president’s senior aide Valerie Jarrett, reading a message from Obama and wife Michelle at the service, said: “Muhammad Ali was America”.