Muslims have traveled from all over the world to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a Kentucky arena for a final tribute to Muhammad Ali.
A fellow Muslim who shares the boxing great’s name traveled from Bangladesh. Mohammad Ali arrived with no hotel reservation, just a belief that this pilgrimage was important to honor the global icon in a traditional Islamic service.
The Ali from Bangladesh said he met the boxer in the early 1970s and they struck up a friendship based on their shared name. The Champ visited his home in 1978 and always joked he was his twin brother, he said.
He will join more than 14,000 people who have tickets to the service Thursday in louisville, which will be broadcast worldwide and streamed online, offering a window into a religion many outsiders know little about, but have come to scorn.
Organizers say the service, or Jenazah prayer, is open to all, but meant especially as a chance for Muslims to say goodbye to a man considered a hero of the faith. U.S. Muslims hope the service for the Kentucky native will help underscore that Islam, so much under attack in recent months, is fully part of American life.
“Muhammad planned all of this,” said Imam Zaid Shakir, a prominent U.S. Muslim scholar who will lead Thursday’s prayers. “And he planned for it to be a teaching moment.”
“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 said. “That’s moving and that touches people.”
Timothy Gianotti, an Islamic scholar at the University of Waterloo, Canada, who has worked for years with the Ali family to plan the remembrances said the service will consist of short, standing prayers said over the body, which in this case will be in a coffin facing Mecca.
The Jenazah service lasts only a few minutes, with people customarily standing in lines, divided by gender, as they recite the prayers. At Ali’s service, Muslims lining up to join the recitation will be separated by gender, but the wider audience will not, Gianotti said.
Tickets are still available for Friday service. But all 15,500 tickets for Friday’s memorial at KFC Yum! Center in louisville were claimed within an hour.