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LOUISVILLE. — At a time when Muslims in America are facing scorn and bigotry, the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali should be remembered as the true, peaceful face of Islam, residents of his hometown say.

On Sunday, two days after the three-time heavyweight champion known simply as “The Greatest” died at age 74, hundreds of people filed past his childhood home in Louisville, now a museum dedicated to his remarkable life.

Mourners leaving flowers and other mementos remembered his sporting prowess and his activism, but also spoke of Ali and his Muslim faith — he converted in the mid-1960s — and how his example can help dispel stereotypes about Islam.

“As a Muslim, I think it’s definitely important for us that we have such a person in the respected world that’s known to everybody, that gives us a good image,” said Hamza Shah, a doctor in Louisville, where Ali grew up and first started boxing.

“With the stuff going on these days, most of the time, you see in the media there’s a bad image of Muslims,” Shah said.

“The one person we can definitely get a good image of was Muhammad Ali, and he portrayed what the real Islam is.”

Since early 2015, attacks by Muslim extremists in Paris, San Bernardino, California, Brussels and elsewhere have fueled animosity among some Americans toward the Islamic world.

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, now the party’s presumptive nominee, has seemingly co-opted that hostility for political gain, on Sunday even suggesting a Muslim judge could be biased against him in US courts.

Trump sparked outrage at home and abroad in December when he suggested a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States.

“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” Ali said in a sharp rebuke to the Trump proposal.

“I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam, and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”

When he learned that Ali — who abandoned his given name Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam in 1964 — had died, Chicago-based imam Syed Hussein Shaheed said he dropped everything to head to Louisville.

Shaheed was traveling with several other men, all dressed in white and wearing caps. — AFP.