Islam and the U.S. Prison System
Mass incarceration in the United States is used as a way to control minority groups, including Muslim Americans. The government has leveraged mass incarceration, and the extensive use of supermax prisons, referred to as “a cleaner version of hell,” as well as the general language of “law and order” as a means means of maintaining the political status quo of white supremacy. Black people in America are disproportionately incarcerated and those who are Black and Muslims have been increasingly victimized by the US tactics of imprisonment and torture to suppress Muslim voices. Black Muslims, who were already targeted by the the “War on Drugs”, started being targeted by the War on Terror post 9/11. As Sohail Daulatzai has shown, the terms “Black criminal” and “Muslim terrorist” began to blur, and Black Muslims were considered the “enemy within” due to not being considered foreign yet still being associated with terrorism.
The United States government has also established a international networks of prisons in its quest for power, extending what happens within the country abroad, which includes the containment, incarceration, and a higher rate of torture of non-white bodies.The US approved horrible torture methods on those who are being held in detention centers like the one in Guantanamo Bay. For instance, a man named Mohamedou Ould Slahi was detained without being charged at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years, where he was subjected to conditions such as 24 hour interrogation, cold cells, and sleep deprivation.
According to a project called Believers Bail Out (BBO), “Muslims in pretrial detention face an increased risk of victimization, surveillance and denial of religious freedom in the prison system due to anti-Muslim racism.” Furthermore, scholars have detailed how starting in the 1950s, incarcerated African Americans who are labeled as “politically radical” are seen as “black militants” and therefore particularly threatening. Moreover, as the Black Muslim prison population increased and along with it increased prison advocacy, prison policies were developed that identified all “black militants” as Muslims, irrespective of actual personal belief, indicating that these policies considered all Muslims to be “radical.” We see an example of this the case of political activist Imam Jamil Al-Amin, who is currently imprisoned after being convicted for a murder that another man confessed to. Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown and for his activism during the civil rights and black power eras, was until 2018, being held in a supermax prison. This was because he was considered “too high profile” for the prison he was originally in and that his presence would cause “unique issues” to the prison that were never clarified. Stories such as that of Jamil Al-Amin exemplify how the US unofficially targets Muslims and sets criteria for how to interact with them through the incarceration system.
Methods of controlling Muslims are common, but many inmates convert to Islam while in prison because it allows them to feel a sense of connectedness. According to Daulatzai, Prisons are also a “site of resistance” despite the cruel and unusual treatment Muslims are subjected to. In this way, incarceration as a method of control is achieving unintended consequences.
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Economic Policy Issue: Mass Incarceration Is One of the Most Pressing Civil Rights Issues Today
HBO trailer: Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison
Youtube: Ava DuVernay's 13th: "Law & Order Candidate"
Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary
Friedman and Sommers: Solitary confinement and the Nation of Islam
Muhammad: Legal campaign launched for Imam Jamil Al-Amin
Siddiqui: The Prosecution of a Revolutionary: The Trials of H. Rap Brown (Jamil Al-Amin)
Al Jazeera on Youtube: Why Inmates Are Converting to Islam video