Boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who died Friday at 74, railed against Jewish promoters and slammed Zionist control of the world. But he also attended his grandson’s bar mitzvah and appealed to Muslim extremists to release Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl. Ali’s grandson became a at a Philadelphia synagogue in 2012. Jacob Wertheimer, the son of Khaliah…
LOS ANGLES — When Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in January 2002, the most famous American Muslim of the day, Muhammad Ali, pleaded publicly for his release and life. “I appeal to you to show Daniel Pearl compassion and kindness,” Ali implored Pearl’s abductors, who would behead the journalist…
Billy Crystal, the Jewish comedian and longtime friend of Muhammad Ali, will deliver a eulogy at the boxing legend’s funeral next Friday. Former President Bill Clinton and Bryant Gumbel will also speak the memorial service in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, ESPN reported. “This is what was chosen for him: to be the great ambassador for…
[For Bob Arum, the famed promoter who befriended Muhammad Ali some 50 years ago, the former heavyweight champion’s legacy in the boxing ring pales in comparison to his impact on America and the world. Arum told Reuters on Saturday, the day after Ali died in a Phoenix-area hospital at the age of 74, that his…
The boxer Muhammad Ali, who died on June 3 at the age of 74, has been accused of having “frequently clashed with the Jewish people.” The truth is more complex. The Louisville-born heavyweight champ was raised a Baptist, but joined the Nation of Islam in 1964, abandoning his birth name of Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr….
I thought about sports and anti-Semitism after reading about an extraordinarily ugly incident at a recent Dutch soccer game. And I realized that in my 44-year career at The New York Times, covering about 8,000 events, I personally witnessed only two such moments. And I wrote about only one other. I never was the object…
We’ve called former world heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali “The Greatest,” “The People’s Champion” and “The Louisville Lip.” Now we might want to also call him “Zaidy” — and a very proud one at that. The boxing news site “The Sweet Science” reports that the Muslim Ali’s grandson recently became a bar mitzvah. The 13-year-old…
Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports By Mark Ribowsky W.W. Norton & Company, 496 pages, $29.95 ‘I’ve gotta use words when I talk to you,” Apeneck Sweeney says to his girlfriend, Doris, in T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Agonistes.” Sweeney had it right. Words transform reality by making it both more…
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