WASHINGTON, D.C. — Mohammad Ali Salih, an 84-year-old Sudanese-American journalist who has lived in Washington, D.C., for 46 years, has arranged for a religiously inclusive headstone at his future gravesite in Falls Church, Virginia. The six-foot-by-three-foot granite marker will feature the symbols of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Unitarian Universalism in a single line.
The headstone will also include an inscription reading: "Symbols of local worship places I took my young children to. Thanking America’s freedom of religion. And hoping for a conciliation between Islam, Christianity and other religions." Salih purchased the gravesite at National Memorial Park, where his body will be returned from anywhere in the world under the terms of his contract, unless it cannot be found or identified.
Approximately 30 years ago, Salih began taking his children to various houses of worship to help them explore questions about God. His will requests that his body be taken after death to an Islamic center, a Methodist church, a Jewish synagogue, and a Unitarian Universalist church—places he visited with his family. His early efforts included bringing his children to a Muslim Sunday school in Lorton, Virginia, which operated out of a warehouse and was run by a Pakistani community.
At that Sunday school, teachers instructed his children not to celebrate Halloween, calling it satanic, and discouraged Thanksgiving and Christmas observances. They also told the children to avoid eating McDonald’s French fries, claiming they were cooked in pork fat—a claim inconsistent with McDonald’s public statements that it uses vegetable oil.
During a Passover Seder, Rabbi Bruce Aft introduced Salih to his congregation as the Prophet Elijah, invoking the tradition that Elijah tests humanity’s hospitality and compassion. At a Roman Catholic church, a priest permitted Salih to attend only in his capacity as his son’s father and informed him he could not receive the Eucharist. Salih told the priest, "I had absolutely no intention of partaking in the Eucharist."