By Ryan FoleyChristian Post Reporter Monday, March 11, 2024

A well-known progressive activist and former Christian pastor has announced his conversion to Islam and expressed solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

In a post about Telegram early Monday morning, Shaun King announced that he and his wife had “converted to Islam to begin Ramadan” at their mosque in Dallas, Texas. A video excerpt of the conversion ceremony shows King agreeing that “there is only one God and his messenger is Muhammad.”

After describing his conversion as a “beautiful, powerful, meaningful” experience that he will “never forget,” King said he planned to “start fasting in the morning with more than 1 billion Muslims around the world.” King's post on fasting reflects that fasting from sunrise to sunset is a custom practiced by various Muslim sects when observing Ramadan.

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King added, “My heart goes out to my dearest friends in Gaza and I am proud that we were able to provide meals tonight to thousands upon thousands of families from north to south in Gaza and will do so every day of Ramadan.” His Telegram account consists of multiple posts documenting the situation in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israeli civilians, expressing sympathy with the Palestinians there and outlining his. efforts provide them with hot meals during Ramadan.

In subsequent post On Monday afternoon, King promised to “begin sharing our journey with Islam this Ramadan.” He too expressed gratitude that “we have received hundreds of messages from all over the world from men, women and children who want to convert to Islam with us.”

King first became a source of national controversy in 2015, when he emerged as one of the most prominent voices in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement. King, a former Christian pastor, suggested that the man listed as his biological father on his birth certificate was not his biological father and that his real biological father was a “light-skinned black man” with whom his white mother had affairs. His comments led to accusations that he was simply pretending to be black.

King was also mired in several controversies surrounding the accounting of money he managed for social justice causes and his relaunch of Frederick Douglass' anti-slavery newspaper, The North Star. While The Daily Beast noted that he never faced criminal or civil charges related to the misdemeanor allegations, professor and author Keisha N. Blain said in a message. after on Twitter/X in 2020 that she had been “warned” about King. Blain claimed she learned through personal experience that he was a “liar and a fraud.”

After the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 1, 2017, King suggested that “whiteness, somehow, protects men from being labeled as terrorists.” He noted that the perpetrator behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas was white and contrasted the treatment he received from the media with the treatment directed at non-white mass shooters by the media.

In 2020, after the death of George Floyd in police custody, King generated a backlash for proclaiming that “the statues of the white European they claim Jesus must also come down” along with statues commemorating historical figures who owned slaves and/or supported slavery. King described the depiction of Jesus as “a form of white supremacy”.

“In the Bible, when Jesus' family wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down,” he demanded.

King claimed that “all the murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down.” Characterizing them as a “gross form of white supremacy”, he affirmed that they were “racist propaganda” and “tools of oppression”.

“I am a practicing Christian. I am an ordained minister and have been a senior pastor for many years,” he noted in response to the beating and alleged death threats he received for his condemnation of a “white Jesus.” King defended his comments, doubling down on his belief that “Christian whiteness has ALWAYS been dangerous.”

King elaborates on his background and experience on his personal website. An archived version of the site as it appeared in 2020 highlights King's “astonishing 1,500 articles on injustice” that have appeared in The Intercept, New York Daily News, Harvard Law's Fair Punishment Project and the Daily Kos.

The website portrays the speaker and writer as a journalist, humanitarian and activist as well as “a magnetic element of the Black Lives Matter movement” and “a humane and passionate advocate for justice and families.” It mentions that King previously served as “a popular high school history and civics teacher in Atlanta, then a traveling teacher and counselor in a dozen different prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers in Georgia – speaking and teaching 5 times a day, 5 times a week, for years.”

“Shaun started and pastored a church in inner-city Atlanta and launched several award-winning social good campaigns that have raised millions of dollars for causes around the world,” the website added. A 2016 interview with BuzzFeed News identifies the church King started as Courageous Church.