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"Our finest tribute to the memory of Muhammad Ali is for us to continue to make America great in the way that he did--by being true to what is right, by speaking truth to power, by being the best of who we are."
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Greatness is the theme of the hour.
We in America were great, are great, or will be great again--so we are assured during this political season. How fitting it is, then, for us to memorialize at this time one whose claim to be the greatest so many honor, and now most especially at his passing: Muhammad Ali. Ali reviews the case for his greatness in several moving Youtube videos recently uploaded for all of us to watch. These are recordings of speeches he gave from younger days. Here is a sampling of reflections he gave in response to a question put him on how good he was: "I can't say how good I am and no true Muslim will brag or even take a chance on saying he's good... It's up to Allah, God, to be the judge." Perhaps the same is true of greatness, in Ali's mature judgment.
But we who remember Ali may well reach for words like good and great to describe him. No one who listens to Ali speak from his faith can fail to be moved by him. He is charming, witty, extremely intelligent, and disarmingly sincere almost in the way of a child. How many of us know that in later years he coauthored with his daughter, Hana Yasmeen Ali, a whimsical autobiography entitled
The Soul of a Butterfly? It's very believable when Hana suggests in an online interview with Belief.net that she gets her "poet's soul" from her dad.
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