BBC Radio 4 2015-12-11

From many quarters, and even from within his own party, Donald Trump has been widely condemned for saying he believes that Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. But to me the most interesting condemnation has come from one of America’s national treasures, the greatest boxer of all time, the astonishing, the incomparable Mohammed Ali. Now here’s a man who can trump even Trump’s famously inflated ego: “I’m not the greatest, I’m the double greatest” he once said. “Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I'm so mean I make medicine sick.”

Or at least, that was the ego of the man before he converted to Islam. In 1965, he went to the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. “It was an exhilarating experience” he said “to see people belonging to different colours, races and nationalities, kings, heads of state and ordinary men from very poor countries all clad in two simple white sheets praying to God without any sense of either pride or inferiority. It was a practical manifestation of the concept of equality in Islam."

But American public opinion didn’t understand his conversion. He was convicted for refusing to fight in Vietnam. He was banned from boxing for three and a half years. His passport was confiscated. He was stripped of his title and placed under surveillance by the FBI. We all must hope that Trump’s recent comments don’t point to a future that resembles this disturbing past.

But what is it with boxers and God? Tyson Fury, the current world heavyweight champion, has been talking a lot about his faith recently. When asked about how he felt that Manchester police were investigating him for hate crime all he could say was: “All praise be to Jesus Christ” and later ‘If you want to know any more about my opinions, consult the Pope of Rome” – which may surprise the more irenic Francis. Nonetheless, from Pastor George Foreman, to both sides in the monster Mayweather/Pacquiao fight earlier this year, God is constantly invoked. Yes, some may think they’ve suffered from a blow to the head, and cynics may well think it’s is all about cashing in on the religiosity of the American public. But I’m uneasy with what feels like a class-based cultural superiority that’s often directed towards those who are commonly from poorer backgrounds and who express their faith in apparently unsophisticated ways.

But anyway, that’s certainly not what you get from Mohammed Ali. He’s always a class act. "True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion," Ali said recently. And I wish Trump would understand that. As Ali continually insists, Islam is a religion of peace. Though my prediction is that in a fight between Donald Trump and Mohammed Ali, it is Trump that will come off worse. A knockout blow. Down in the first, I reckon.