Muhammad Ali mourned

aliMuslims have travelled from all over the world to Louisville, Kentucky, to attend a traditional Muslim prayer service for Muhammad Ali, the record-setting world heavyweight champion, who passed away last week.

More than 14,000 people bought tickets for Thursday’s service in Kentucky Exposition Center, which will also be broadcast worldwide and streamed online, according to Ali’s wishes.

Organisers say the service is meant especially as a chance for Muslims to say goodbye to a man considered a hero of the faith.

“Muhammad Ali began his transition to becoming a Muslim in 1964 when he was 22 years old,” said Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo reporting from Louisville.

“For over 50 years he has been one of the most recognizable Muslims, at least in the US.”

US Muslims hope the service for the boxing legend will help underscore that “Islam is fully part of American life”.

“Muhammad planned all of this,” said Imam Zaid Shakir, a prominent US Muslim scholar who will lead Thursday’s prayers.

“And he planned for it to be a teaching moment.”

Ali, who died on Friday at 74, famously joined the Nation of Islam, the black separatist religious movement, as a young boxer, then embraced mainstream Islam years later, becoming a global representative of the faith and an inspiration to Muslims.

“One reason Muhammad Ali touched so many hearts, he was willing to sacrifice the fame, the lights, the money, the glamour, all of that, for his beliefs and his principles,” Shakir told the Associated Press news agency.

“That’s moving and that touches people.”

Timothy Gianotti, an Islamic scholar at the University of Waterloo in Canada, worked for years with the Ali family to plan the remembrances.

-Al Jazeera

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