Rima Fakih with Wassim Salibi

DEARBORN  – Former Miss U.S.A  Rima Fakih’s upcoming marriage to music producer Wassim Salibi, a Christian, is being scrutinized in the media and by the local Muslim community.

Fakih, 30, a former Dearborn resident and graduate from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, made history in 2010 when she was crowned the winner of the Miss USA pageant. 

She was believed to be the first Muslim woman to hold the title.

Ironically, before his turn as a hate mongering Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump – the owner of the pageant from 1996-2015 – was immediately impressed with Fakih from early on and pegged her as the frontrunner in that year’s pageant. 

Fakih with Miss USA Pageant owner Donald Trump in 2010.

Fakih would later land a stint on WWE Tough Enough, a reality tv wrestling program. Her personal life also faced some setbacks when she was arrested for drunk driving in Highland Park, MI in 2012. 

Since then, Fakih has been living in Los Angeles. 

She is now in the spotlight once again for her upcoming marriage to Salibi, a Lebanese Christian. 

Salibi is the manager of R&B singer The Weeknd, who in the last year had astonishing success on the music charts with his multi-platinum album Beauty Behind The Madness, which spawned two #1 singles and Grammy Award wins. 

Reports of Fakih’s nuptials quickly began circulating the internet this week. 

On Friday, FOX News published an article with the headline “First Muslim Miss USA Rima Fakih converts to Christianity.” Other major news outlets quickly followed with the same propaganda.

However, what the reports failed to highlight was that Fakih had always come from a multi-faith background. 

Fakih did identify herself as a Shia Muslim after being crowned Miss USA.  But she would note on numerous occasions that her family included both Muslims and Christians.

Fakih with Salibi, R&B Singer The Weeknd and Palestinian-American Supermodel Bella Hadid.

“I have a family that is a mix of different religions and different ethnicities,” she told The Huffington Post in 2010.  “My brother-in-law is Christian, and he (and my sister) baptized their two sons. I have an uncle who converted to Christianity, and he’s a priest now. My family is Muslim. But none of this ever came up in our family. We don’t look at religion as something that defines us, we look at religion as something that we respect, and something that teaches us about ethics.”

Fakih was born in Lebanon and attended St. Rita’s Catholic School near Beirut as a child. When her family moved to the U.S., they first settled in New York, where Fakih attended another Catholic school. 

It wasn’t until Fakih moved to Dearborn some years later when she would finally embrace her Muslim faith. 

The news of Fakih’s conversion seems to have upset some in the local Muslim community. 

Her social media pages have been flooded with negative comments and disapproval of her marriage to Salibi. 

“No amount of fame. No amount of fortune. And NO amount of love is worth me leaving my Deen or Raab,” said one local woman. 

The couple is getting married on May 15 in Bkerke, Lebanon. The Weeknd is reportedly performing at the ceremony.