How to Help Muslim Prisoners

All incarcerated Muslims are someone’s mother or father, son or daughter

BY HABEEBA HUSAIN

Imam Rasul Suluki, a former supervisor at New Jersey Chaplaincy Services, has seen and heard his share of horrible and traumatic stories while visiting prison inmates.

“I’ve seen men go from being sane and functional to naked and growling like an animal,” says Suluki. “[They’re] like war stories.”

However, the imam says there isn’t much benefit in relaying such stories because a listener only becomes distressed. What the imam of the Willingboro Muslim Education Circle prefers to share instead are the transformative tales — something he witnesses among the incarcerated far more than the horror stories.

He remembers visiting a Muslim inmate serving a life sentence, who was recently denied his appeal for compassionate release to spend his final days at home. Suluki describes the cell as empty; it had nothing but a concrete slab with a mattress atop for a bed. He had to speak to the inmate through a slit used to provide food.

“I said, ‘How are you?’” Suluki recalls. “[The inmate] said, ‘Imam, I’m so happy. I’m at such peace with all of this. I know they turned me down, and I can’t go home. But everything is okay. I’m really very well.’ And the strange thing is that I left that prison, come out here and I’m hearing people complain about the smallest things — what a juxtaposition.”

Those outside the correctional facilities often forget about the mass incarceration problem in the U.S., a country that boasts the world’s largest prison population. It has the highest incarceration rate per-capita: 698 per 100,000 people, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

At the federal prison level, Muslim inmates make up the third largest faith group, according to a July 2021 Department of Justice inspector general report. This accounts for over 11,000 Muslims in federal prisons who have only 13 Muslim chaplains in the nation to serve them.

Regardless of personal religious adherence, however, Tricia Pethic of the Muslim Prisoner Project (https://www.muslimprisonerproject.org/) in New York says a chaplain’s job is to fulfill the constitutional freedoms of a prisoner’s right to practice religion.

“Just because one breaks the law and goes to prison, the right to religious practice doesn’t cease,” says Pethic, who served as a chaplain herself in Connecticut and New York.

Still, religious freedoms are not always upheld. Rameez Abid, director of communications and outreach at the Islamic Circle of North America’s (ICNA) Council for Social Justice (https://icnacsj.org/), says Muslim inmates want basic religious services like books, Ramadan programs and khateebs for Jum’ah prayer.

“The biggest hurdle we all face is the need for good, solid religious education,” says Abdul Muhaymin Al-Salim, former inmate and current teacher at the California-based Tayba Foundation (https://www.taybafoundation.org/), an organization that provides inmates with traditional Islamic resources so they can pursue self-study. Similarly, the Muslim Prisoner Project works to overhaul prison libraries, which often house either outdated and poor-quality pamphlets about Islam or very advanced volumes of Hadith. Pethic’s organization fills that gap.

Aside from access to resources and services, Abid says a number of inmates also deal with civil rights issues, such as name-calling, discriminatory language, not getting meals on time during Ramadan and denial of religious rights like keeping a beard or appropriate burial procedures. Because ICNA for Social Justice presently doesn’t have the capacity to staff a legal team, Abid Abdul Muhaymin Al-Salim (center), a former inmate, is a teacher at says he forwards many civil rights the California-based Tayba Foundation complaints to organizations like CAIR and lawyers who will investigate pro bono. Areas with a high Muslim population, like New Jersey, dealt with these issues more often in the 1980s according to Suluki. Officers and institutions were suspicious of Muslim chaplains at that time — would they side with inmates, help prisoners escape, bring in contraband? “You also had to deal with the racism. Being Black and also being Muslim was two strikes in some of the officers’ minds,” Suluki says. “The inmates had to go through the same process.” While things have since improved in New Jersey and other states with many Muslims, areas with minimal numbers are still catching up. In Jacksonville, Fla., for example, inmates were denied timely iftar and suhoor meals this past Ramadan. Attorney Hassan Shibly, a civil rights lawyer who led the CAIR Florida chapter for a decade before stepping down earlier this year, visited the facility to politely but sternly make it clear he was ready to sue should Muslim inmates have their rights trampled on while incarcerated. Within a few days, the issue was fixed. Lawyers have the ability to litigate and keep the prison staff accountable, says Shibly. Their presence may be much more effective when it comes to enacting change for Muslim inmates in locations where chaplaincy may be lacking. But the responsibility of caring for this

forgotten part of the ummah does not — and should not — fall on only chaplains and lawyers. The rest of the Muslim community can surely check in on the wellbeing of their brothers and sisters serving time behind bars.

“A lot of people look down on others who’ve made mistakes. But one of the central components to our religion is tawba,” says Al-Salim. “If a person becomes Muslim while they’re in prison … this is without a doubt a moment when all of the everyone should -- become a volunteer to help their incarcerated Muslim brothers and sisters.

Each state has a process for becoming a volunteer, Suluki explains. That may consist of filling out an application, getting a background check and receiving an orientation. The lack of Muslim volunteers means a lack of services for inmates. They miss out on Jum’ah and Eid prayers, religious classes and desperately needed righteous company.

BUT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF CARING FOR THIS FORGOTTEN PART OF THE UMMAH DOES NOT — AND SHOULD NOT — FALL ON ONLY CHAPLAINS AND LAWYERS. THE REST OF THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY CAN SURELY CHECK IN ON THE WELLBEING OF THEIR BROTHERS AND SISTERS SERVING TIME BEHIND BARS.

sins and wrong actions and wrong beliefs prior to that are forgiven — an absolute clean slate. We have to remember that, as opposed to looking at our brothers and sisters as if they’re some type of demon or some type of foul person that has to be removed from society.”

Al-Salim points out that most inmates will eventually be released and need to reenter society. The greater Muslim community can certainly help them out by offering decent jobs so they can care for their families, welcoming them into their mosques and overlooking their past mistakes — for which they have already repented.

“The vast majority of [inmates], will be coming back out. A tremendous help would be for volunteers, both inside and outside, to help [them] re-enter back into the community,” Suluki says. “The one thing I find that we lack — and which Christians are very adept at — is reaching out to people and making them feel welcomed. It’s a shame you can go into most mosques [and] nobody knows you. And you leave and nobody knows you.”

As Suluki mentions, the community need not wait for inmates’ release to establish a relationship with them. Anyone can -- and

“You just have to be someone who comes in, smiles, gives them hope, helps them feel like they can do this thing — they can be a Muslim in America in or outside prison,” Pethic says. “You don’t have to be a chaplain to go in there and provide suhba, companionship, to these men and women.”

The more Muslims on the outside help those on the inside, the stronger our community becomes collectively, and the stronger our faith becomes individually.

“Too often, the kufi, the hijab [and] the Quran get packed up in a box and sometimes never come out,” Pethic says. “We don’t want their experience of joining this religion to be something that they put aside when they leave the confines of the prison.”

Hearing a story about an inmate leaving Islam upon release is truly a horrible one. But if the greater Muslim community comes together to care for our overlooked brothers and sisters during and after their incarceration, we can hopefully share many more transformative stories instead. ih

Habeeba Husain is a freelance journalist based in the New York tri-state area. She helps manage Muslim-run businesses WuduGear and Kamani. Her work has appeared in SLAM Magazine, WhyIslam. org, and Narrative.ly, among other online and print publications. Connect with her on Twitter @HabeebaHusain. The world we live in is constantly evolving and ISNA is committed to being a positive driver of change. ISNA has long recognized the importance of engaging with other faith communities as a fundamental part of its mission, and therefore, we continuously host and participate in interfaith events, meetings and webinars to educate our friends, partners, officials and activists about Islam.

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