Realm of the SCENSCI

The Name is Muhammad Ali Mighty Whitey

And imma whoop your ass, you hoity toity

I’m for my blacks, my browns and my Chinese

Who you bomb, maim and kill with glees

And I will hold Hamas in condemnation,

Only when you stop killing innocents

And end your brutal occupation!

(my take on what Ali might have versified given current events)

Muhammad Ali was not a great poet. He versified as above. Of course, since he was far more gifted than I am, even his versification/doggerel was better than anything I can ever dream up. Apart from being a versifier, and arguably the first rapper in history, what he really was, was the GOAT. The first and the true GOAT. In fact, he was the one who coined the damn phrase: The Greatest of all time. He called himself not the best of all time, not the best ever, not the greatest ever but the Greatest. Of. All. Time: G.O.A.T. At the peak of his powers, he was simultaneously the most hated man in America, and the most popular man (more popular than Elvis and the Beatles combined) in the rest of the world. The latter was especially the case in the so-called Global South, where a farmer or a truck driver or a plumber would not have any idea about Elvis and the Beatles, but they would know who Ali was. He was hated in the US, and loved in the rest of the world for the same reason: for his refusal to kill “other dark-skinned people”, and for his fearless black pride. It also didn’t hurt that he was the most beautiful, the most gifted fighter to have ever graced the planet.

After him sports figures taking political stands were few and far between and athletes reverted to being the one dimensional cartoonish entertainers they had always been before Ali appeared on the scene. However, since Colin Kaepernick’s courageous and visionary stand, there appears to be hope that we might be on the cusp of an era similar to the golden era of the 60s, the era where Ali reigned supreme ably helped by John Carlos and others.

Here are a few exciting examples. Pakistan has just (a few hours back) lost its match to Afghanistan in the Cricket World cup. Of course, as a Pakistani team fan, I am gutted. On the other hand, from a political point of view, and as a fan of sports in general, and of the man who explicitly introduced politics in sports, I am overjoyed that Ibrahim Zardan, the man of the match, dedicated his team’s victory over Pakistan to the Afghan refugees expelled by Pakistan. I wish Ibrahim and others had done more. It would have been so right if he or his other teammates had dedicated their victory to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. To their great credit, several famous and not-so-famous footballers have spoken out in support of Palestine, and have suffered various forms of backlash. Finally, a word for our Pakistani cricketers who despite constantly losing on the field, have also expressed their solidarity for Palestine! We need our sports heroes now more than ever to do what Ali once did: take on mighty whitey and whoop his ass hoity toity! Viva Palestine!

(where mighty whitey could be the Pakistan government, the American government or the State of Israel, and other powers that be)