c. 1996 Religion News Service

STORMVILLE, N.Y. (RNS)-The Islamic holy month of Ramadan, said Imam Hasib Abdul-Haqq, the Muslim chaplain at Green Haven Correctional Facility here, is a time for patience, a time to develop the discipline that enables a person to accept his destiny.

For Amir Ali Brathwaite, one of nearly 200 men who listened as Abdul-Haqq delivered his sermon during a recent prison prayer service, the message held a poignancy that only someone in his situation can fully appreciate.

Brathwaite has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in a bank robbery in which one person was murdered. At age 25, he has already spent seven years behind bars, the last four at Green Haven, a maximum-security state prison for men set on a slight rise in the wooded countryside about a 90-minute drive north of New York City.

Only his faith in Islam, Brathwaite said, enables him to face the prospect of endless days in prison.”If Allah ever feels I’m ready to get out of here, then I will,”he said.”Until then, I can only practice Islam and wait.” Jailhouse conversions are nothing new. But in American prisons today, a declaration of faith-as in Brathwaite’s case-often means conversion to Islam.

Between 10 percent and 20 percent of the 1.5 million inmates in federal, state and municipal prisons and jails today identify themselves as Muslims, according to Imam Warithuddin Umar, president of the National Association of Muslim Chaplains. In New York City jails, the figure is closer to 30 percent.

As a result, the nation’s prisons have become a key element in the rapid growth of Islam in America, particularly among African-Americans, who account for almost half of the nation’s 3 million to 5 million Muslims.

Like Brathwaite, the overwhelming majority of the inmate converts are African-American men, who comprise more than half the nation’s prison population. Some 30,000 black men convert to Islam in prison each year.”So many of the African-Americans you see today who are Muslims were the prison converts of the last 20 years,”said Fareed Nu’man, a researcher for the American Muslim Council.”Ever since the days of Malcolm X, prisons have been an important source of recruitment. Today we’re seeing the cumulative effect.” Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African Studies at Howard University in Washington estimated that one of every 10 African-American Muslims today came to the faith through a prison conversion.”You cannot minimize the importance of this to the spread of Islam in the U.S.,”he said.

At no time is Islam more visible in prison-and attractive to prisoners-than during Ramadan, the month in which Muslims believe Allah (God) began to reveal the Koran-the Muslim scripture-to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

Ramadan-which began this week (Jan. 21) and will end about Feb. 20, depending upon the sighting of the next new moon-is a time of dawn-to-sunset fasting and spiritual introspection. But at Green Haven and other prisons, it’s also a period of special privileges for Muslims.

During Ramadan, Muslims are allowed to spend additional time at the prison’s two mosques-specially reserved areas of the prison that are decorated with Arabic caligraphy and paintings of Islamic holy places. They also receive extra portions of”hallal”meats from animals slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law and are even allowed to prepare their own meals.

Those privileges do not go unnoticed by the general prison population. Attendance at Muslim prayer services increases during Ramadan, as does the number of conversions.

At the maximum-security New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, Imam Abdul Raheem al-Mutazzim said about 250 of the facility’s 2,200 prisoners attend the weekly Friday communal prayer service during Ramadan, up from about 125 the rest of the year.”Everybody doesn’t necessarily convert,”said al-Mutazzim.”But Ramadan sure increases the interest in Islam, if only because for some it’s a chance to get out of the lockup.” Jailhouse professions of faith-regardless of the religion embraced-are a complex matter, often involving despairing individuals dealing with deep-seated spiritual and psychological pain.”Being in prison is being told by society that you have no value,”said Todd Clear, a professor at Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice in Newark, N.J.”Therefore, to be told you are equal to others in the eyes of God is to find a counter to the profoundly demeaning experience of prison.”Jailhouse conversion is tied up with self-esteem, a need for community, spiritual awakening and a sometimes desperate need for transformation.” For imprisoned African-Americans, race is also often a factor in their decision to become Muslims.

One aspect of this is the rejection of Christianity, the religious culture of most American blacks. Converts to Islam tend to view Christianity-and particularly the black churches-as colonial outposts of white society, a society they believe has rejected and condemned them because of its racism.

Islam, black prisoners also say, was the religion of their African ancestors prior to their forcible conversion to Christianity by white slave owners. (Academic researchers say that about 20 percent of all African slaves were, in fact, Muslims; the remainder practiced tribal religions.) Rather than saying they have converted to Islam, imprisoned African-American Muslims tend to say they have”reverted”to Islam.”Those who have been hurt the most, who feel the system and the church has failed them the most, are the most attracted to the exotic aspects of Islam or the radicalism of some Islamic figures,”said Umar, who in 1975 became one of the first Muslim chaplains to work in the nation’s prisons. Today, he coordinates chaplaincy affairs for 22 northern New York State prisons from an office in Albany.

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The racial component of Islam in prison explains much of why few white prisoners become Muslims.”We get Euro-Americans who accept Islam from time to time, but it’s harder to get them to stick with it because the racial separation in prison is even more pronounced than in the outside world,”said al-Mutazzim, the New Jersey State Prison Muslim chaplain.

However, in some areas-notably New York City-prison officials say surprising numbers of Hispanics, who usually come from a Roman Catholic background, have accepted Islam.

Imam Luqman Abdush-Shahid, director of ministerial services for New York City jails, said 35 percent of the city’s 5,000 Muslim prisoners are Hispanics. For the most part, he said, these Hispanic Muslims were born in the United States, speak English as a first language, and have spent their lives in close proximity to African-Americans and have similar life experiences.

Still, for Hispanics, accepting Islam generally means going through an even greater cultural change than do blacks, who today frequently encounter Muslims in their communities, if not their extended families.

Saleem Diaz, a Green Haven prisoner who has served 20 years of a 25-years-to-life term for second-degree murder, said that when he first became a Muslim 15 years ago, his family”looked at me as if I was selling out my race.”Since then, he said, they have become more accepting of his decision.

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Of course, not everyone who accepts Islam in prison-or any other faith, for that matter-is truly transformed, or even continues to practice the religion after he has been released.

Bilali Johnson first became a Muslim in 1976, while serving time for armed robbery. But that did not stop the 37-year-old from Atmore, Ala., from committing other crimes after he was released-despite Islam’s emphasis on moral behavior. Today, he’s back in prison at Green Haven, 14 years into a 25-years-to-life term for attempted murder and second-degree murder.”Islam for me was like a sweater I put on and off. I hadn’t really internalized it,”he said.

Umar said the recidivism rate among all criminals in New York state tops 65 percent, but for Muslims it is 20 percent to 35 percent.

However, Nu’man, the American Muslim Council researcher, said his studies have shown that 57 percent of the nation’s African-American Muslim prisoners have been arrested four or more times since they accepted Islam.”It’s one thing to practice Islam in a controlled setting like prison, where temptations are at a minimum. It’s a lot tougher to maintain it on the outside,”Nu’man said.

The brutality of prison life also spawns conversions to Islam because of the physical protection that flows from being part of a visible and disciplined inmate faction.”There’s a certain tightness to the Muslim community”in prison, said Imam Muhammad Siddeeq, an Indianapolis public school teacher who became Mike Tyson’s”spiritual adviser”during the boxer’s three years of incarceration in Indiana for rape.”Muslims are constantly looking out for each other. That gives them a protected status,”he said.

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In the early days of Islam’s growth in prison, officials generally viewed the religion as an alien and hostile philosophy. That was the case from the late 1940s, when a jailed Malcolm X first encountered the teachings of the Nation of Islam, to the late 1970s, when Imam Warith Deen Mohammed led the bulk of the Nation’s followers into mainstream Sunni Islam.

Muslims were among the prisoners who angrily agitated the loudest for prison reform, taking prison officials to court to gain legal recognition and freedom of worship.

Today, however, the Nation of Islam is a minor factor in prisons. The vast majority of Muslim prisoners are Sunni Muslims, as are the chaplains. Nation of Islam followers in prison, in fact, generally do not associate with Sunni Muslims, who dismiss some of the Nation’s beliefs as heretical to true Islam.

The change sits well with prison officials, who now tend to see the Muslim influence as positive.”Muslims today are more about being observant and less about politics,”said Arnie Spadafora, Green Haven’s education supervisor and a 15-year veteran of the prison’s staff.”They’re a disciplined, important group here that has the respect of their peers.”They’ve mellowed considerably. Frankly, we’re happy for anything that puts prisoners into a mellow state.”

MJP END RIFKIN