The Daily Swarm

Los Angeles Times:

Michael’s Jackson’s brother Jermaine Jackson reached out to the Muslim world in a long, controversial interview with the Dubai-based pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya aired Thursday night….During his nearly hour-long talk, he spoke out about his brother’s death, the conspiracies he believed were behind the singer’s downfall—and how he believes the King of Pop was on the verge of converting to Islam.

After spending time in the Gulf (Michael Jackson lived in Bahrain for a while in 2005), “Michael hired a team that was all Muslim,” Jackson told Al- Arabiya, dressed in a red Arab Keffeyeh scarf. “His behavior at the time also showed that he was very close to converting.”

The MEMRI Blog:

In the first exclusive interview with an Arab channel, Michael Jackson’s brother Jermaine told AlArabiya TV on Wednesday that the King of Pop was on the verge of converting to Islam….After spending more than a year in the Gulf region, Michael Jackson read a lot about Islam and was very affected by it, said Jermaine Jackson, singer, composer, and former member of The Jackson 5.

Jermaine, who converted to Islam in 1989 after a trip to the Middle East, told the press earlier that after he performed his pilgrimage ritual in Mecca, he noticed that his brother started asking him a lot of questions about Islam….Jermaine gave Michael many books about Islam which the latter read avidly. Afterwards, Jermaine added, Michael told him he was proud of him for finding something that could give him such strength and inner peace.