In Africa, Ali discovered that he was more popular abroad than at home. While most Americans refused to recognize his Muslim name, strangers, writers, and dignitaries in Ghana, Nigeria, and Egypt, showed him respect by acknowledging it. Everywhere he went people cheered his name like he was their champion, a black hero whose name mattered as much as his accomplishments in the ring. “Muhammad Ali is in Africa, all over Africa,” he said later. “The name is in Ethiopia, Morocco, Syria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Algiers, Saudi Arabia. Muhammad Ali [was a common name] when I traveled. Muhammad is the most common name in the world.”12
Ali’s African journey marked a pivotal moment in his life, ushering in a new era when he would become one of the most recognizable and written-about people in the world. But he had become something more than famous. His name had global meaning. During an age of rapid global change, decolonization in Africa and Asia, and the emerging political power of the Middle East, Ali became a liminal figure, quite literally a man betwixt and between cultures. More than any other athlete, he put the “world” into the title of “world champion.”
In Africa, one could sense that Ali’s views about himself, his country, and the world had changed. Something happened to him on that trip, something that stuck with Osman Karriem. “I’ll remember that trip for as long as I live because that was where I saw Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali.”13
ABOUT A WEEK before Ali arrived in Accra, another famous black American checked into the Ambassador Hotel, igniting rumors that the champ had already arrived. While Malcolm X waited to meet his hosts, he sat in the dining room, overhearing conversations about the controversial ending to the previous evening’s world featherweight championship match between Cuban Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos and Ghanaian Floyd Robertson. Perhaps people confused Malcolm with Ali because the Ghana Boxing Authority had announced that the heavyweight champion would attend the match, bringing greater attention to the first title bout ever held in Accra, but Ali did not arrive in Ghana until a week after the fight.14
Malcolm had had no idea that boxing was so popular in Africa and the Middle East until about a month earlier, when he arrived in Cairo. In Egypt, he “was mistaken time and again for Cassius Clay.” Talking to Egyptians, he learned that theaters across the country had shown Ali’s fight against Liston, and popular newspapers, like Al Ahram, had published pictures of them together in New York. Ali was so popular in “the Muslim World,” Malcolm wrote in his diary, that “even the children know of him.” When Ali defeated Liston and publicly embraced Islam, the young champion “captured the imagination and the support of the entire dark world.”15
Throughout his five-week tour of the Middle East and Africa, Malcolm recorded his thoughts in a diary. His journal revealed that he still considered Ali his brother, even though many assumed that once Ali sided with Elijah, his brotherhood with Malcolm was over. In his mind, they remained on good terms. On April 20, he wrote that Muslims in Saudi Arabia had “mistaken” him “for Cassius Clay,” but when they “learned that I am his friend, many questions [were] asked about him.” Malcolm quickly recognized that Ali was the most famous Muslim-American in the world. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where most people spoke Arabic, locals’ understanding of boxing and their recognition of Ali allowed Malcolm to communicate without speaking. Muslim men, women, and children smiled when he proudly pointed at a picture of himself with Ali. By sharing that picture and his stories about Ali, Malcolm gained friends and credibility among Muslims abroad.16