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        Some US Sufi Adherents Claim Spiritual Kinship with Muhammad Ali

   by Masood Farivar

   As the world mourns the death of Muhammad Ali, some American adherents
   of the Islamic Sufi tradition have taken to social media to claim
   spiritual kinship with the boxing great, but scholars say the assertion
   may be more rooted in hype than in fact.

   "There is no question that Ali himself had an interest in and
   inclination towards the mystical practice of Islam," said Omid Safi,
   director of the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University, who met Ali
   in 2004 and spent a day with him at the Muhammad Ali Center in
   Louisville, Kentucky. "But was he a Sufi? What we can say with
   certainty is that he was a careful student of the universal Islamic
   mystical teachings of [Sufi pioneer] Hazrat Inayat Khan and met with
   different Muslim Sufi teachers."

   The day after Ali died, Zia Inayat Khan, the grandson of Inayat Khan
   and current head of the Inayati order, posted an article on his
   Facebook page about "one little known and interesting fact": that Ali
   had inspired Johnny Cash to put music to and record Truth, a poem by
   Inayat Khan, who is widely credited with bringing Sufism to America.

   Naqshbandi 'path'

   The same day, a Facebook page dedicated to a deceased master of the
   Naqshbandi order, one of the largest Sufi groups in the U.S., posted an
   undated photo of Ali with the sheikh, along with a claim that the late
   boxer had "accepted the Naqshbandi spiritual path."

   And on June 5, the official Facebook page of the Naqshbandi order's
   American spiritual leader followed with a video post showing Ali
   visiting the sheikh's house in Michigan in 2001, and taking part in
   what it described as a "bay'a" initiation rite.

   ''Whatever their intent, the posts left fans gushing.

   "Thank you for enlightening [us] about Muhammad Ali's associations
   with" Inayat Khan's teachings, one fan effused on Zia Inayat Khan's
   page.

   A fan of the Naqshbandi order's page adulated Ali as "a Sufi Muslim
   brother," while another, apparently swayed by the video of the
   initiation rite, christened him "Muhammad Ali Naqshbandi."

   The claim that Ali was a Sufi has not been limited to social media.
   Several press reports have picked up on the theme, propped up by a
   resurfaced interview with Ali's daughter Hana Yasmeen Ali. In the 2004
   interview with the religion website Beliefnet, she said Ali "is more
   spiritual now than he's religious," and kept a collection of Inayat
   Khan's teachings, which he considered "the best books in the world."

   No evidence of affiliation

   While the interview points to Ali's interest in spirituality, scholars
   say the suggestion that Ali may have "converted" from Sunni Islam to
   Sufism is misleading.

   "That is a mischaracterization of the relationship between Sufism and
   Sunni Islam," Safi of Duke University said. "Sufism is not a separate
   religious tradition. It is simply the mystical dimension within Islam."

   What's more, there is no evidence that Ali was formally affiliated with
   a Sufi fraternity, said Kabir Helminski, a Louisville-based Sufi master
   and translator of several books of poetry by Rumi, the 13th-century
   Sufi poet. "I doubt Muhammad Ali was the murid [spiritual follower] of
   any particular sheikh, but his heart was in Sufism."

   ''Ali himself never claimed membership in a Sufi organization.
   Recruited into the Nation of Islam in the early 1960s by Malcolm X, he
   initially espoused the group's militant ideologies before abandoning
   them for traditional Islam after the death of founder Elijah Muhammad
   in 1975.

   'I've changed what I believe'

   Elijah Muhammad's son and successor, Wallace Deen Muhammad, "started
   teaching the true meaning of the Quran," Ali is quoted as saying in his
   authorized 1990 biography, Ali: His Life and Times. "But I've changed
   what I believe, and what I believe in now is true Islam."

   Ali's religious beliefs certainly marked a sharp departure from his
   1960s fiery pronouncements.

   "[It] don't matter what religion you are, if you're a good person,
   you'll receive God's blessing," Ali told biographer Thomas Hauser.
   Hauser calls Ali "deeply religious and spiritual," but in his biography
   the author makes no reference to Ali's initiation into Sufism or
   meetings with Sufi masters.
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   inship-muhammad-ali/3367977.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/some-sufi-adherents-claim-spiritual-kinship-muhammad-ali/3367977.html