00:00In what ways is Muhammad Ali's message just as relevant today as it was in the late 60s and 70s?
00:07It's relevant because Muhammad Ali redefined how we ought to gauge success and celebrity.
00:17He showed that real people that ought to be emulated and looked up to are people that stand for something
00:25and are willing to put great risk and sacrifice behind their stand.
00:31At the ultimate level of success in his career, achieving the heavyweight championship and all the perks,
00:40the endorsements and all that goes with it, he stood up for what he believed, lost it all,
00:47sentenced to jail, and was able to overcome it.
00:51And in fact, the Supreme Court spared him the jail, but he lost three years of his career.
00:56So he redefined the values that we as Americans ought to gauge the people that we give celebrity and success status to.
01:09You are not a Muslim, but you are a religious leader.
01:12Why do you think Ali was drawn to Islam in the 1960s?
01:15What do you think that offered him?
01:18I mean, I don't know.
01:18Well, we talked a lot about that over the years.
01:22I was like 12, 13 years younger, so I was like almost a generation behind.
01:28And I would say to him, what was it so about Islam?
01:32And I think it was he grew up in the – he said, Reverend, you were born in the north and all.
01:37I was in the deep south where we had to sit in the back of the bus,
01:42and there were black and white water fountains.
01:44And then even after I won the Olympics, I couldn't eat in restaurants.
01:48So I think it was the appeal initially of that.
01:52And then I think he found his road to God there, his discovery of being at peace with himself.
02:00And I've always believed there are different roads to one God, and we would talk about that, and that was his road.
02:06You know, it's rare today that athletes speak out on social issues to the extent that Muhammad Ali did.
02:14Why do you think that is?
02:15I think that we have – the values in America has changed a lot,
02:21and I think that Ali's death may bring us back to reevaluating those values.
02:28Because we've gone from athletes and entertainers like Ali, like a Jim Brown and others that stood up for things
02:37to where now it's about flashing literally $100 bills on Instagram or showing the latest model car
02:45or kind of mansions you have.
02:48I remember down through the years I would be with Ali certain places on certain causes he was supporting me on
02:56or certain events, and he would literally, if he had an hour of time at a hotel,
03:01he didn't want to sit in the hotel and watch television or talk.
03:05He'd say, let's go out and ming among the people, and he knew he'd going to be mobbed.
03:08You have celebrities today that build walls to protect them from their fans.
03:14Ali, his security would be crazy because they say we can't get him to stop going toward his people,
03:21toward his fans, toward the people that love him.
03:23And I think this whole values of now we respect those that are more distant from us,
03:30that don't express concern about our everyday life,
03:34I think that if anything, in our memory of Ali, we ought to have this discussion
03:38about whether we need to get back to really dealing with people that come from the ground up
03:45rather than the top down.
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