The first ever Muslim Miss USA recently converted to Christianity. Rima Fakih (age 30)—who won the beauty pageant in May 2010—shortly thereafter married her fiancé and music producer Wassim Salibi, a Maronite Christian. The former Miss Michigan converted to Salibi’s faith in April this year, before traveling to her hometown in Lebanon for the wedding ceremony.
Fakih is believed to have grown up in a Shia family, which had a very liberal approach towards religion. Without picking sides between Muslims and Christians, her family observed both kinds of holidays through her growing years.
“We’re more of a spiritual family,” Fakih said in an interview not long after she became Miss USA. “Religion really doesn’t define me or my family. My family’s been very liberal, and we appreciate all different kinds of religions.”
As a child, Fakih attended a Catholic school near Beirut; and after her family moved to the United States in 1993, she attended another Catholic school in New York.
“We’d go to church on Easter. We always had a Christmas tree and every year we go the Radio City Christmas Show, and watch The Miracle on 34th Street. But we celebrate some of the Islamic holidays as well,” she said.
It was not until 2003 when her family moved to Michigan and she enrolled for college that Fakih learned a lot more about the Muslim faith.
“When I went to the University of Michigan, because there’s more of a Muslim community, my dad wanted me to learn more about Islam,” she said. “I didn’t know much about Ramadan and other holidays, and my dad wanted me to take that opportunity and learn.”
In March this year, Fakih tweeted a verse from the Bible, stating, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Maronite Christians happen to be a Roman Catholic sect, which acknowledges the authority of the Pope. The Maronite Church has remained one of Lebanon’s two main religious groups since the country gained complete independence in 1943. While the country’s population constitutes Christians, Muslims as well as Druze people, most Lebanese presidents have been practicing Maronites.
Photo Credits: Christian Daily
