Description:

Ali Muhammad

Signed trifold hot orange pamphlet "Life After Death/The Institute of Islamic Information and Education", 3.75" x 8.5", opens to a full size of 11" x 8.5". Signed and dated in pen and ink to the lower front panel by Muhammad Ali in full signature "Muhammad Ali". Fine condition.

A lovely pamphlet providing an Islamic view of "Life And Death", intending to provide an educational Islamic perspective surrounding this always elusive question.  Fantastic piece with personal significance for Muhammad Ali, as he converted to Islam in 1964. His public conversion was among the most defining moments of his remarkable life. The decision enraged his critics -- his hometown newspaper continued to refer to Ali by his birth name, Cassius Clay, for years to come -- and led him to refuse to serve in Vietnam, a stand that cost him his title, his livelihood and, ultimately, cemented his status as an American iconoclast.

Although theories abound about what was the catalyst for his conversion, according to an excerpt from his book, "Ali: A Life", Ali describes seeing a cartoon in the Nation of Islam newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, illustrating how white slave owners brutally beat their slaves, while insisting that they pray to Jesus. The message: Christianity was the religion of the oppressive white establishment. "I liked that cartoon," Ali wrote. "It did something to me. And it made sense.”  The cartoon was about the first slaves that arrived in America, and the cartoon was showing how the black slaves were slipping off at the plantation to pray in the Arabic language facing the east. And the white slave master would run up behind the slave with a whip and hit the poor [slave] on the back with a whip and say, ‘what are you doing praying in that language, you know what I told you to speak,' and the slave said, 'yes sir, yes sir, Master. I will pray to Jesus, sir, Jesus.' (The cartoon Ali referred to is shown below). At age 22 in 1964, in the year he converted, he won the WBA, WBC and lineal heavyweight titles from Sonny Liston in a big upset. Clay then converted to Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay, which he called his "slave name", to Muhammad Ali. He set an example of racial pride for African Americans and resistance to white domination during the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1966, two years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali further antagonized the white establishment by refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. He was eventually arrested, found guilty of draft evasion charges, and stripped of his boxing titles. He successfully appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction in 1971, by which time he had not fought for nearly four years and thereby lost a period of peak performance as an athlete. Ali's actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation.

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