A Mississippi convert’s family reacted to her Islam with prayer circles like a funeral

Evidence

Next he drew my attention to another e-mail, from a woman in Mississippi who wrote that she had been a Muslim now for five months. “Being a Muslim in Mississippi is not easy, that’s for sure,” she stated. “Most people do not know that I am a Muslim. I live in the Bible Belt, for goodness sakes.” The daughter of a Christian evangelist, this woman had her first introduction to Islam through a friend who she later found out was Muslim. “If I had known that she was Muslim up front, I truly believe I would not have befriended her. I was sincere in my thinking that she was going to hell. I didn’t hesitate to tell her so, either. OHHHH. How many times did I say, ‘Sweety, you are gonna go to hell, if you don’t accept Christ as your savior. I am sorry to tell you that.’ Gosh, I was so condescending, I don’t know why she stayed my friend.” Her own family took her conversion hard, she explained, and they “seemed to fall apart during that time.” She described how “they talked among themselves,” expressing sentiments like, “She’s gone mad,” “What is she thinking?” and “WE MUST SAVE HER.” They even held “prayer circles” for her, which she characterized as being “almost like a funeral.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 918

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail that an evangelical family’s ‘prayer circles’ felt ‘almost like a funeral’ to a woman converting to Islam is a vivid, humanizing anecdote worth passing to anyone studying American religious identity or conversion experiences.
• XREF: Connects to the earlier passage where respondents cited Islam’s ‘logic’ over the Trinity as a conversion reason — contrasts the rational appeal with this deeply emotional family rupture.