Muhammad Ali was Muslim, therefore the presence of many Muslims and the recitation of Quran at his funeral comes as no surprise, having 12-hours of continuous coverage by most mainstream media outlets is unthinkable in almost any other situation.
It seemed the identity of Muhammad Ali was now inextricably linked with his faith. A societal recognition that Muhammad Ali was Muslim first and foremost. And yet the official social media accounts of the Champ, run by the Authentic Brands Group, have failed to represent the central place of Islam in his legacy.
Muhammad Ali was Muslim
Despite the widespread coverage of his funeral, there was no mention or promotion of the event on any of his social media pages. Both Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, two key events in the Muslim calendar, came and went without a word.
“Islam is conspicuously absent from the Ali brand,” writes Hannah Allam on Buzzfeed News. After looking through Ali’s official social media accounts, which date back at least 4 years, she concluded that there was “not a clue that Muhammad Ali was Muslim, an omission so glaring that it seems deliberate.”
These social media feeds are “the main conduit for introducing Ali to a new generation of Americans coming of age after his death… [they] celebrate Ali’s activism and humanitarian work without mentioning that Muhammad Ali was Muslim,” which Ali stressed continuously was his faith.
As Professor Sherman Jackson of the University of Southern California put it, ” the duty now falls to American Muslims to ensure that a central part of his legacy isn’t lost to revisionism and commercialization.”
Find the original report here.
