(RNS) — When he remembers the sermon given at his grandmother’s funeral service, Tariq El-Amin describes feeling surprised as the Baptist minister preached. While El-Amin expected a sermon about death and the afterlife, he said the pastor mostly talked about how salvation could only be obtained through Jesus Christ.
“He went into this whole polemic, this whole tirade about how our theology was wrong. You know, saying, ‘Muhammad ain’t going to save you,’” El-Amin recalls.
The only visibly Muslim man in the audience, El-Amin said the sermon sounded like an attempt to belittle his faith. His wife, mother, sisters and aunt, who wear hijabs, also felt singled out.
“He took a moment that should have been about the emotional and spiritual well-being of all of the attendants, in particular the family, and turned it into a time to proselytize,” he said.
When a similar scene played out again at his other grandmother’s funeral, El-Amin wrote a Facebook post about it. He received hundreds of comments from Black Muslims who said they had faced similar situations during Christian funeral services. Reading the comments, El-Amin, whose parents converted to Islam in the 1960s through the Nation of Islam and whose extended family is Christian, realized many Black Muslims feel ostracized o …