Boxing great and cultural icon Muhammad Ali, who passed away on Friday aged 74, was known for his quick and darting technique in the ring and his ability, as he put it himself, to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

That gift for stinging characterized Ali both in and outside the ring, where his quick tongue and stinging repartee made headlines no less than his fists - and sometimes with greater effect. He became a symbol for black liberation during the 1960s by standing up to the U.S. government and refusing to enlist to the army for religious reasons, famously saying: "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger."

His conversion to Islam in 1964 - accompanied by abat for him” – specifically. Harry Markson, the boxing director of Madison Square Garden in New York, and Sam Massell, the mayor of Atlanta.

Open gallery view In this Oct. 1, 1975, file photo, spray flies from the head of challenger Joe Frazier as heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali connects with a right in the ninth round of their title fight Credit: AP

After announcing his retirement from the ring in 1974, Ali lost no time in throwing right hooks at Zionism and embracing the Palestinian cause. Talking to reporters in Beirut, Lebanon, at the start of a tour of the Middle East, Ali said that “the United States is the stronghold of Zionism and imperialism.”

On a subsequent visit to two Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon, the former heavyweight boxing