Muhammad Ali and the Sometimes Champions of Conscience

As a boy growing up in Louisville in the 1960s and 1970s, Muhammad Ali was a figure who was impossible to ignore.  At an early age I learned that the brash, beautiful boxer from Louisville – the “Louisville Lip” – was a man to be respected and in some ways admired.  An exceptionally gifted athlete who backed up his bold predictions and over-the-top bravado with actions, Ali won the heavyweight crown an unprecedented three times.  His catalogue of epic fights included defeats over Sonny Liston (twice, including the famous first-round knock-out in Lewiston, Maine), “The Rumple in the Jungle” in 1974 against George Foreman, and three monumental battles with “Smokin” Joe Frazier culminating in “The Thrilla in Manilla” in 1975.  Over the course of his career Ali demonstrated a remarkable adaptability, changing his style from the lightening quick movement of his early years when opposing fighters found it difficult to land a punch, to the “rope-a-dope” style that enabled him to defeat exhausted opponents with rapid combinations late in the match.  Given his unparalleled accomplishments in the ring, as a boxer, it would be hard to deny Ali his self-given moniker “The Greatest.”

Although he became arguably the world’s most famous person, Muhammad Ali never forgot his hometown, and he maintained close ties with Louisville throughout his life (see his closing remarks following the Foreman fight here).

My parents recognized the many challenges faced by the young Cassius Clay. As such, they taught my brothers and I that Ali was someone whom all Louisvillians should respect – someone who made use of his God-given talents and excelled, rising above the many disadvantages faced by someone born poor and black in the segregated South, someone who went on to become an Olympic gold medalist, World Champion, “The Greatest.”

Articulate and charismatic, there was, indeed, much to admire in Muhammad Ali.  Although I think most of his fellow Louisvillians (including most African Americans) were puzzled by or disagreed with his conversion from Christianity (he was raised Baptist) to the Nation of Islam, and later to a more conventional form of Islam, they respected his freedom to do so.  As with many celebrities, his struggles with marital fidelity (he was married four times and was a serial adulterer) were overlooked – out-shown by the brilliance of his boxing and the controversy of his politics.

Ali’s accomplishments as an athelete are all the more remarkable given the fact that he was not allowed to box for three-and-a-half years during the peak of his career. In 1967 he refused induction into the U.S. Army claiming conscientious objector status.  He was subsequently convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five-years imprisonment and fined $10,000.  Although he remained free during his appeal (a case he eventually won in the U.S. Supreme Court, see here), Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from boxing in the United States, and denied a visa that would have enabled him to box overseas.

Many people were troubled (understandably) by Ali’s embrace of the Nation of Islam’s separationist approach to race relations (see here), including his vile opposition to inter-racial marriage, and his sometime demonization of the “white race” (see here).

Moreover, many resented Ali for his refusal to enlist in the army.  As a child, I recall more than a few adults referring to Muhammad Ali as a “draft dodger.”  And it is a fact that the Kentucky General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Ali had brought discredit to the Commonwealth and those who had given their lives for their country.

Still others admired Ali for his opposition to the Vietnam War and his support for civil rights, exposing the hypocrisy of an America that identified itself with freedom and equality while denying basic civil rights to black Americans. As he explained (see here):

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

Citing his Muslim faith, Ali became an outspoken critic of the war (see here) noting in a blunt style that was uniquely his own, that the Viet Cong “never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they never put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father” (see here).  Moreover, he found it incongruent that white Americans would urge him to fight abroad but not support his rights as a U.S. citizen: “You won’t even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight but you won’t even stand up for me here at home” (see here).

Since his death last Friday, Muhammad Ali has been celebrated as a man of conscience – as someone who willingly sacrificed financial gain in order to honor his religious faith.  Mike Barnicle of The Daily Beast praised Ali as someone who “danced in the ring with more grace than any ballet figure but refused out of conscience to take one small step forward for his local draft board” (here).

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (here) described him as “a man of conscience who put his ambitions on the line by refusing to fight overseas on behalf of his country in an unjust war.”

The Atlantic acknowledged the national controversy created by Ali’s claimed conscientious objector status, but offered that “Ali’s stand against the Vietnam War transcended not only the ring . . . but also the realms of faith and politics.”  The article quotes former Attorney General Eric Holder praising Ali whose “biggest win came not in the ring but in our courts in his fight for his beliefs” (see here).

Writing in the New York Times, Michael Powell writes that Ali gave us a model of courage: “Courage is being 24 years old and risking all, the anger of newspaper and television reporters, and millions of white Americans who see you as a public enemy, to say no to a war” (see here).

The headline for another New York Times story declared that Mohammad Ali had evolved from a blockbuster fighter to “a country’s conscience” (see here).

Hilary Clinton tweeted that Mohammad Ali was unmatched in his “courage and conscience,” and Bill Clinton said that we “watched him grow from the brash self-confidence of youth and success into a manhood full of religious and political convictions that led him to make tough choices and live with the consequences.” (see here).

It is refreshing and gratifying to hear this kind of support for the right of religious conscience.  But where has this appreciation for America’s “first freedom” been these past several years”?

Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers (here) was not a heavyweight boxer, famous the world over.  Neither was Jon and Elaine Huguenin of Elane Photography (here), or Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop (here).  But each was threatened by the government with severe penalties, for following the dictates of their religious conscience, just like Muhammad Ali.

As Eric Holder said of Ali, each of these individuals fought in the courts for their beliefs. Each has, as Bill Clinton said of Ali, made tough choices based on religious conviction. Unlike Ali, Barronelle Stutzman was not a 24 year old athlete when the government challenged her religious beliefs, but a grandmother in her 70s. Still, didn’t she risk “the anger of newspaper and television reporters, and millions of [secular] Americans who see [her] as a public enemy, to say no to [same sex marriage]”?

So why celebrate one and vilify the others? There is, of course, an obvious difference between imprisonment in lieu of military conscription and the imposition of crippling fines on a business. Yet it is also obvious that both are punitive measures that constitute a substantial burden on religious practice. Moreover, on the face of things, it seems clear that the government has a great interest in filling the ranks of the armed forces than in compelling a vendor to service a particular wedding.

So what accounts for the difference?

Is it simply the passage of time?  That enough years have elapsed so that the wounds of Vietnam are no longer fresh and the questions of conscience raised by Muhammad Ali and others (such as Philip and Daniel Berrigan) are no longer pressing?  Or is it the view that since the last helicopters left the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, history has vindicated Ali’s judgment on the war?  Perhaps this is simply the whitewashing (so to speak) of a radical character into a cherished avuncular figure? (see here).

All of these are plausible explanations, but I fear that the real reason is something far more insidious and pernicious. My fear is that for those who pay tribute to Mohammad Ali and scorn people such as Barronelle Stutzman are in favor of religious conscience as a principle when it is invoked to support a normative view with which they agree and dismiss it when it is invoked in defense of a normative view that they reject.

That, of course, is not support for the principle of religious conscience, but a cynical, counterfeit use of words.