Hearing just the other day that it was the 40th/45th/50th? anniversary of the famous boxing match between Muhammad ('fight like a butterfly and sting like a bee') Ali and Joe Freeman (I believe it was)...and hearing once again that memorable, unforgettable refrain (above, and 'catch me if you can!'), it occurred to me that it was time to note the fact that the land of my (immediate) forbears (and their own previous forbears, and so on and on...back to Sweden and Denmark in particular)... especially in this day and age of anti-Muslim broadsides and diatribe from so many...
...(has) included three notable Muslim figures/personalities over recent times/decades...to wit:
*the aforementioned Muhammad Ali
*Martin Luther King's contemporary (and 'co-assassinatee') **Malcolm X
#Louis Farakhan (sp?)# -an awful, dreadful, near unforgivable mistake, folks: please forgive me - no, not the spelling, but the individual concerned...it should've been ***Al Sharpton/Franklin...
For sadly, as I've just discovered today (November the 9th) LF is a spouter/promoter of some of the most vile, anti-Jewish rhetoric and diatribes I've yet encountered (throughout an awfully sheltered existence/lifetime, apparently)...and if you have any quibbles thereabouts, one brief (five minute at most) viewing of a Fox News video (YouTube?) link with a (presumably Jewish) academic named Al(l)an Dershowitz of Birmingham, Michigan, will quickly disabuse/disillusion you...bigtime!
**For his eventual reconciliation with not only Martin Luther King, but moreover MLK's staunch, unswerving, nonviolent approach to civil disobedience. And because I to this day have immense sympathy with/empathy for - to the best of my ability, anyhow - black Americans (both in the era of Jim Crow, and up to, into and through the Civil Rights Era) subject to inhuman treatment at the hands of their countrymen and expected (by some, anyhow) to sit back all meek and mild and just take it.
***Apologies one and all for all my confusion of Al Sharpton and Al Franken (let alone Louis Farakhan!)...let's just say (for now)...that these three distinctly different men perhaps share a few similarities (of sorts), but for the purposes of this opinion piece that's really neither here nor there. Suffice to say/add that Al Sharpton as per his 1995 million man march on Washington D.C. (while head honcho of Nation of Islam)...had more than a few redeeming features...at least in my own view.
Malcolm X's much more militant approach is surely at least understandable to anyone with a human heart...for who of us would willingly just sit idly by and watch our beloved kindred treated to degradation and death and do diddly squat to stop it and/or get back at the perpetrators? Who...I mean, really?
To Be Continued (having been inadvertently, involuntarily detoured to this blogsite tonight when I had something infinitely more important and meaningful to post upon my other, much less used and frequented blogsite). If the 'issue' of the sanctity of life 'appeals' to your sensibilities,, you might appreciate following me there quite shortly...i.e. to
*http://nuffsaid:consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/).
Nuff Said!
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