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...after being cut from speech line-up and banned from laying a cloth on boxer's coffin during Muslim ceremony -Recep Tayyip Erdogan had specially flown to Louisville, Kentucky, to say farewell to Ali -But the president’s office said Erdogan left the United States for Turkey late Thursday after attending the prayer ceremony -He was due to speak at today's multi-faith service but lost his slot due to 'lack of program space' -Funeral organizers also 'refused to allow Erdogan to lay a cloth from the Kaaba on Ali’s coffin during the Thursday ceremony' -In addition he wanted the head of Turkey's religious...

Erdogan was initially on the roster of speakers on the funeral — a list that includes a number of famous names, such as former president Bill Clinton and comedian Billy Crystal. However, on Monday, Ali family spokesman Bob Gunnell had said that two unnamed speakers had been added to the program, meaning that foreign guests Erdogan and King Abdullah II of Jordan would no longer be able to make an address. Gunnell told reporters that the two world leaders had been “gracious and understood.” But there were a number of suggestions that perhaps Erdogan had been removed from the list...

After the recent death of famous champion heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, liberals, blacks, and even conservatives have flooded social media with praise for the sports legend. However, one African woman is wondering if blacks who are mourning his loss have lost their minds — and it’s all because of one thing most are too star-struck to realize. Mona Walter is an ex-Muslim Somali activist who is determined to expose what her former religion has done for 1,400 years and is planning to do to Western countries. After immigrating to Sweden when she was 19, she was given the opportunity to...

Actor Will Smith and former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis will be among the eight pallbearers at Muhammad Ali’s memorial service Friday in Louisville, Ky. The legendary boxer died June 3 following a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Other pallbearers at the service will include Jerry Ellis — brother of the late Jimmy Ellis, who was Ali’s former sparring partner and former world heavyweight champion — and several relatives and close friends. Smith received an Oscar nomination for playing the title role in the 2001 movie “Ali.”

LOUISVILLE — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, will soon be filing stand-alone legislation to end the practice of registering for the Selective Service. The bill titled ‘The Muhammad Ali Voluntary Service Act’ will be presented to Congress in honor of the famed boxer who refused to serve in the Vietnam War. On April, 28 1967 the heavy weight champion was stripped of his title for refusing to be inducted in the United States Army. Ali, a Muslim and conscientious objector, was convicted of draft evasion — a conviction that would later be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. “One thing...

As fans around the world remembered Muhammad Ali at the weekend, a member of Tehran’s city council suggested that a street in the Iranian capital be named after the American boxing legend, a convert to Islam who during a 1993 trip to Iran was quoted as calling the Islamic republic “the greatest.” Addressing a meeting of the city council, Eqbal Shakeri described Ali as a “symbol of resistance to racism and U.S. imperialistic policies in the Vietnam War,” the IRNA state news agency reported — a reference to Ali’s refusal to be conscripted into the military in the 1960s in...

The president of Turkey and king of Jordan joined the long line of world leaders, religious figures and superstars set to speak at Muhammad Ali's funeral Friday. Ali family spokesman Bob Gunnell announced funeral details at a news conference Monday. California imam and scholar Zaid Shakir will preside over the service at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville. …

<p>At a time when Muslims in America are facing scorn and bigotry, the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali should be remembered as the true, peaceful face of Islam, residents of his hometown say.</p>

The death of boxing great Muhammad Ali cost American Muslims perhaps their greatest hero, a goodwill ambassador for Islam in a country where their minority faith is widely misunderstand and mistrusted. "We thank God for him," Talib Shareef, president and imam of the Masjid Muhammad mosque in Washington, told a gathering of Muslim leaders who honored Ali in Washington on Saturday, a day after he died in a Phoenix hospital at age 74. "America should thank God for him. He was an American hero." From the turmoil of civil rights and black Muslim movements of the 1960s to the darkest...

in 19 Jan 1981 This is the miraculous moment thatMuhammad Ali saved a suicidal man who was threatening to jump from a ninth-floor ledge. The late boxing champion , who died at the age of 74 this morning, left onlookers stunned as he dangled out of a window and talked the man down within 20 minutes after police negotiators had been trying for hours. The baying crowd watching from the ground had chillingly urged the "distraught" man to jump, but Ali offered a beacon of hope by promising to help the man find a job, thisCBS News report shows. Ali,...

A TALE OF TWO OBITUARIES By Burt Prelutsky, 6/4/2016 I assumed I would have to wait until Jimmy Carter, 91, died before the outpouring of love and respect over the passing of a public figure would make me quite this nauseous, but, then, I hadn’t counted on Muhammad Ali passing at the age of 74. Ali was a very good boxer. Some have insisted he was the best, while others have claimed Joe Louis or Sugar Ray Robinson were better. For the record, let me confess that in my opinion, being a boxing champion ranks near the bottom of the...

Even in his final months, Muhammad Ali was speaking out on behalf of Islam, the religion he so famously embraced in the 1960s by changing his name and refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. In December, the boxing legend issued a statement criticizing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Ali called on fellow Muslims to “stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda.” Ali, who died Friday at 74, endured public scorn when he joined the Nation of Islam as a young athlete. Decades later, long...

Hillary Clinton invoked Muhammad Ali today as she blasted Donald Trump for his attack on the federal judge assigned to handle one of the suits filed against Trump University. "On a day that we are mourning Muhammad Ali, it's worth remembering that we live in a country where people can break down barriers, where they can worship their own god, where they can choose their own name, and where they can lead and follow their dreams as far as their hard work and talent will take them," Clinton told a fired up crowd of 1,200 packed into a high school...

So How soon will it be that we start seeing MAB show up MAB you ask... Muhammad Ali Blvd. show up in cities towns across America "

Muhammad Ali's birthplace of Louisville, Kentucky, is paying tribute Saturday to the late boxing legend, who died Friday in Arizona at 74. At a ceremony at the city's Metro Hall, Mayor Greg Fischer said flags on government buildings would remain at half-staff until Ali has been laid to rest.

Joe Bruno on Boxing – Muhammad Ali is Not a Hero. Muhammad Ali passed away Friday night, June 3, 2016. I wrote the article below around the year 2000. I got to know him fairly well in the 1980’s, when I was Vice President of the Boxing Writers Association. He was a real friendly man, and we had several nice conversations about what I have written below. Still, his death doesn’t change what he was, and what he did early in his career. It is with a sad heart that I stand by what is written below. It’s just the...

President Barack Obama, who keeps a pair of boxing gloves worn by Muhammad Ali in his private study off the Oval Office, said Saturday that Ali “shook up the world and the world is better for it.” Obama likened Ali, who died Friday, to other civil rights leaders of his era, and said the boxer stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela in fighting for what was right. […] “He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved,” Obama said...

Muhammad Ali, the silver-tongued boxer and civil rights champion who famously proclaimed himself "The Greatest" and then spent a lifetime living up to the billing, is dead. Ali died Friday at a Phoenix-area hospital, where he had spent the past few days being treated for respiratory complications, a family spokesman confirmed to NBC News. He was 74. After a 32-year battle with Parkinson's disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer died this evening," Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman, told NBC News.

No link as yet. TV stations have broken to news that Muhammad Ali had died.