Religious Books Banned in Prisons; Islam Blamed
I recently came across an article from the Jewish Week discussing the newest victims to the war on terror: prison inmates.
Prisons have enacted regulations to limit the amount of religious texts accessible to prison inmates, removing all but 150 books per religion from prison chapels. As the Jewish Week explains, prison officials are fearful that religious texts, particularly Muslim books, are used to promote violence in prisons. As a result, religious texts have been banned and removed, leaving some Jewish prisoners without access to even the Torah. As the author laments, "Jewish inmates appear to have become the unintended victims."
We must question, though, why Muslims are the intended victims of these regulations.
According to an article by FoxNews, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain that the removal stemmed from a Department of Justice review done in April of 2004 of the way prisons choose Muslim religious service providers. Feldman said that the study was done because of a concern that prisons "had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large."
It scares me that our very own government, our own Department of Justice issues reports implying that Islam is a religion that incites violence and poses a threat to our country.
What scares me even more is that our government is in the business of limiting what we are allowed to read.
Prisons have enacted regulations to limit the amount of religious texts accessible to prison inmates, removing all but 150 books per religion from prison chapels. As the Jewish Week explains, prison officials are fearful that religious texts, particularly Muslim books, are used to promote violence in prisons. As a result, religious texts have been banned and removed, leaving some Jewish prisoners without access to even the Torah. As the author laments, "Jewish inmates appear to have become the unintended victims."
We must question, though, why Muslims are the intended victims of these regulations.
According to an article by FoxNews, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain that the removal stemmed from a Department of Justice review done in April of 2004 of the way prisons choose Muslim religious service providers. Feldman said that the study was done because of a concern that prisons "had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large."
It scares me that our very own government, our own Department of Justice issues reports implying that Islam is a religion that incites violence and poses a threat to our country.
What scares me even more is that our government is in the business of limiting what we are allowed to read.
Labels: banned books, brian feldman, department of justice, foxnews, islam, jewish week, jews, laura taylor swain, prison
posted by Rori @ 2:03 PM
4 Comments:
At 2:57 PM,
Zain Christopher said…
Shocking, yes; surprising, no. Historically, the Nation of Islam has had the most success of rehabilitating felons due to its rigorous emphasis on uplifting the lives of its adherents through a combination of faith and action. While the NOI is not a mainstream Islamic group, many of it's converts go on to orthodox Islam. Those who maintain their religious practice post-incarceration, are likely to become contributing members of society and are at minimal risk to re-offend. This threatens the established order in two ways: 1)it decreases the chance of former convicts returning to a system which is becoming more and more reliant on privatization all the time which translates into a dependency on criminals; 2) our government is largely at war with Islam and the less potential opponents it has to confront, the better situation it sees itself in. The fact that our personal safety actually increases with more people sincerely practicing Islam than not, does not interest the Bush administration. What does interest them is an endless war and a prison economy with the most inmates of any industrialized nation on the planet, reaping the largest market share.
At 4:40 PM,
Alicia Allison said…
I'm a little troubled by the term "orthodox Islam." Is this a term used in scholarship?
At 10:08 PM,
Zain Christopher said…
This post has been removed by the author.
At 10:14 PM,
Zain Christopher said…
Orthodox Islam is commonly used in scholorship, yes. Although there are slight variations of context used by some scholars, it typically refers to those who adhere to what are known as the Five Pillars of Islam: The belief in the One God and Muhammad as the Messenger of God, performing the five daily prayers, giving a minimum of one's wealth in charity, fasting during Ramadan, and performing the annual pillgramage once in one's lifetime- if possible. Sunni and Shia both adhere to these principles and are thus considered orthodox.
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