Yesterday, I began trending on Twitter for something I said about Muhammad Ali.

It was this: ‘Muhammad Ali said far more inflammatory/racist things about whites than Donald Trump ever has about Muslims.’

I posted this after watching a deluge of bile explode at Trump on social media when he paid tribute to Ali following the boxing legend’s death.

Trump and Ali had been friends for decades, and Ali even attended Trump’s 2005 wedding to his current wife, Melania.

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Trump and Ali were friends for decades, and Ali even attended Trump’s 2005 wedding to his current wife, Melania. They are seen here in 2001

Despite the friendship, Trump haters exploded with bile when he tweeted his condolences after Ali died

But these trifling details didn’t matter to the howling mob who believe that Trump’s a racist Hitler-esque Muslim-hater and therefore had to be mocked and abused for his ‘sickening hypocrisy’.

I didn’t intend to disrespect Ali with my tweet, as many claimed.

Why would I when just 24 hours earlier I had written a heartfelt tribute to him as the greatest superstar icon of my lifetime?

But I did intend to offer the anti-Trump brigade some historical perspective about their own hero as they vented their collective spleen.

Of course, that spleen then promptly vented itself on me, but I make no apology.

It is a fact that Muhammad Ali said a lot of very inflammatory, racist things after he joined, in the ‘60s, the Nation of Islam, a virulent organisation run by Elijah Mohammed.

Frankly, Ali’s statements during his 10-year status as the group’s most famous ‘frontman’ were not just outrageously racist but also anti-Semitic, sexist and homophobic.

Ali said a lot of very inflammatory, racist things after he joined the Nation of Islam. Some statements during his 10-year status as the group’s most famous ‘frontman’ were not just outrageously racist but also anti-Semitic, sexist and homophobic. He's seen here with Malcolm X

‘All Jews and gentiles are devils,’ he once declared. ‘Blacks are no devils. Everything black people doing wrong comes from (the white people): Drinking, smoking, prostitution, homosexuality, stealing, gambling. It all comes from (the white people).’

He called for a complete separation of the races. ‘Integration is wrong,’ he insisted, ‘we don’t want to live with the white man. I’m sure no intelligent white person in his or her right mind wants black men and women marrying their white sons and daughters and in return introducing their grandchildren to half brown, kinky haired people. I want to be with my own. No women on this whole earth can please me and cook for me and socialise and talk to me like an American black woman. You can’t take no Chinese man and give him no Puerto Rican woman and talking like they’re in love and emotionally in love and physically.’

Explaining why he believed all white men were also ‘the devil’, Ali said: ‘I’ve heard Elijah Muhammad say that many white people mean right and in their heart want to do right. But if 10,000 rattle snakes were coming down the aisle right there and I had a door I could shut, and one thousands of those snakes meant right, they didn’t want to bite me and I knew they were good. Should I let those rattle snakes come down, hoping those one thousand get together and form a shield? Or should I close the door and stay safe?’

White people, he said, ‘kill our men…and rape our women daily.’

Ali’s rampant racism even extended to wanting blacks who had sex with whites murdered.

‘A black man should be killed if he’s messing around with a white women,’ he said.

And if a black woman was messing with a white man?

‘Then she dies. Kill her too.’

Imagine if Donald Trump said any of these things about blacks or Muslims?

Ali’s opinions drew strong criticism even from civil rights champion Dr Martin Luther King, who commented: ‘When Cassius Clay joined the Black Muslims, he became a champion of racial segregation and that is what we are fighting against.’

So let’s cut the absurd, deluded pretence that Muhammad Ali wasn’t a man who spewed a lot of very hateful, racist claptrap when he was young, because he indisputably did.

But then Ali grew up, matured and in the process changed dramatically in his views and beliefs.

‘The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life,’ he memorably observed.

And Ali didn’t waste a day, morphing from angry firebrand activity to public advocate for global peace and harmony.

“Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved,’ he latterly explained, ‘religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn’t belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone. We all have the same God, we just serve him differently…It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can’t love only some of his children.”

Donald Trump should heed those words carefully.

He and Ali are of course very different people but they shared many qualities too: both bombastic, supremely cocky showmen with a love for belittling opponents, talking up their own genius, fighting with everything that moved and skilfully manipulating the media to fuel their personal and professional brands.

Trump, a fellow cocky showman, may want to take a leaf from Ali's playbook and dial down the race-charged rhetoric over Muslims and Mexicans

As Trump now prepares to take on Hillary Clinton for the presidency, he may wish to take a leaf out of his old friend Ali’s book and dial down some of his own race-charged rhetoric.

I don’t believe Trump’s a racist. But his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. was an unnecessarily inflammatory and unworkable plan. And I don’t think he’s doing himself any favours by inferring the judge presiding over his Trump University lawsuit is biased because of his Mexican heritage.

After the San Bernadino terror attack in California last year, which killed 20 people, Ali issued a fierce statement condemning the perpetrators for hijacking Islam for nefarious means.

‘We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,’ he said. ‘I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about the killing of innocent people in Paris, San Bernadino or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.’

Ali then called on political leaders to ‘use their position to bring understanding about Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.’

As the world pays tribute this week to The Greatest, let’s not try to sugar-coat what he was or gloss over what he became.

Trump could learn from Ali's wisdom. He drew a clear line between the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims after the San Bernardino massacre, while Trump went the other direction. They are seen here at Ali's Celebrity Fight Night XIII in 2007

Muhammad Ali will leave many great legacies, in and out of the ring.

But the message he promoted about Islam in his later years may well turn out to be his most important.

Let our political leaders do as he said and draw a clear line between the vast majority of real, peace-loving Muslims and the murderous barbaric ISIS extremists who use Islam to falsely justify their violence.

Then compel them to do what they can to help those good, decent Muslims root out and eradicate those who currently give their faith such a bad name.

Muhammad Ali was wrong about many things he spouted as a provocative young man, but right about so many as he reached old age.