Islam behind bars

[PsychoDad]

Islam behind bars
American prisons become political and religious battleground over Muslim inmates
By Rachel Zoll
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - It's Friday on Rikers Island, time for weekly worship for nearly a quarter of the city jail's 14,000 inmates.
The men, Muslims, file quietly into a classroom of white cinderblock that serves as their mosque. Incense burns to chase away a sour smell from the hall, as the inmates sit quietly on sheets stamped ''Department of Corrections'' covering the linoleum floor.
Imam Menelik Muhammad is delivering the day's sermon. As he stands beneath a Quranic prayer on the wall facing Mecca, he urges the prisoners to reform. ''You will not be considered a Muslim,'' he admonishes, ''unless people are considered safe from your hands and your tongue.''
...
But the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have brought new scrutiny to Muslim inmates, many of whom are black men focused on surviving incarceration. While prison chaplains of various denominations argue that Islam offers a spiritual path to rehabilitation, others say it has the potential to turn felons into terrorists. The FBI calls prisons ''fertile ground for extremists.''
...
Chaplains describe the typical inmate convert as a poor, black American upset about racism, not Mideast politics, or someone who turned to Islam to cope with imprisonment. When they get out, these men are so overwhelmed by alcoholism or poverty that the crimes they are most likely to commit are the ones that landed them in jail to begin with, chaplains say.

More here:
http://sltrib.com/entertainment/ci_2778840

Much like Bush, ''They don't care about Osama bin Laden,'' .

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Imam Bilal

is the prison chaplain for a large state prison on the West Coast. Having met Imam Bilal and seen the joy and light on his face, I can't imagine anyone thinking that Islamic clerics would be teaching terrorism. To transmute hatred and anger into hope and love--the real meaning of turning dross into gold--can be found in practicing the Way.