Islam in the Slammer

These days, of course, with law-enforcement officials ever-vigilant for terrorist activity, many already-minted Muslims are arriving in our prison system. Consequently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a handy “Correctional Institution’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices.”

CAIR’s many critics–some of them at this magazine–have alleged that Islam’s stateside image custodians are little more than shills for terrorist organizations (like Hamas) and the front-groups that love them (like the recently closed Holy Land Foundation). But that’s giving short shrift to CAIR’s other important work: shilling for cop-killers like Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown. (CAIR says there is no evidence that Al-Amin is guilty of shooting two officers who were trying to serve him with a warrant. A jury disagreed with CAIR–on all 13 counts.)

Of course, the above charge is unfairly reductive as well. For during the past few years, CAIR has done Allah’s work. They went after the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance for featuring the Ayatollah Khomeini in its “Wall of Demagogues” display. And they’ve defended the faith against Liz Claiborne, who inscribed Koranic verses on the back pockets of her junior miss jeans.

But perhaps CAIR’s crowning achievement is the “Correctional Institution’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices,” which the group’s press release says is being issued “as controversy grows over the treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.” Much of the guide is fairly standard, get-acquainted fare for wardens and their new Muslim inmates. Elective medical procedures should be delayed until after Ramadan. The Koran prohibits the consumption of pork by-products “such as lard and gelatin” that are mother’s milk to good Christian boys. “Worship,” the guide says, “may be performed in any clean, dry place.”

However after ticking through the incidentals, CAIR evidences what rock promoters used to call “Van Halen Syndrome.” Van Halen, you’ll remember (or maybe you won’t), used to contractually obligate their concert venues to provide large vats of M&M’s before their shows–with the brown ones meticulously removed. If, while backstage, Diamond Dave, Eddie, or any of the fellas grabbed a big handful of M&M’s and a brown-coated candy was spotted, there’d be no show, no refunds, no sex with underaged groupies (that last point was probably negotiable).

From a prima donna perspective, CAIR’s guide, if followed, would make Muslims the Van Halens of the penal system. Not only, according to CAIR, are Muslim inmates to be allowed to pray five times daily while facing Mecca, but “toilets and posters of living images should not be placed in that direction.” Muslims, CAIR says, must wash their faces, hands, and feet with a pure-water ablution called “wudu” before prayer, and in the more-than-we’d-like-to-know category, we are told that “Muslims are required to shower after ihtilam [nocturnal emission] before they are able to perform any prayer.”

Since Islam forbids “viewing others’ private parts in public,” prison showers and restrooms “should be designed to accommodate this privacy requirement.” In the event that someone stashes contraband in their Koran, the book may be “inspected and if needed, confiscated.” But, says CAIR, “inspection and confiscation procedures should be made in the presence of the institution’s imam or religious coordinator. Should Korans be seized, they must be treated with respect. This way, correctional officers can demonstrate that they separate the actions of the inmate who violated prison rules from a holy scripture cherished by all Muslims.”

CAIR expects prison officials to make all sorts of other exceptions for Muslim inmates: to let them use “incense and oil-based perfumes,” to permit only guards of the same sex to search prisoners and their visitors, to allow Muslims to celebrate Eid (the day of festivity) by taking a day off from work detail. All of these suggestions would go down swimmingly if they were being offered to say, a resort owner in Marrakesh, or a hotel manager in Dearborn. But CAIR is trying to make these recommendations stick in prison, a place traditionally renowned for restricting instead of facilitating freedoms–that’s why they call it “prison.”

Muslims, of course, aren’t the only group that’s tried to game the system for privileges under the guise of religious liberty. Native American prisoners have literally rioted over not having soul-purifying sweat lodges, while Catholics have thrown fits over being served grape juice instead of holy wine during communion. The Legal Times once ran a lengthy survey of all the bizarre little sects that have similarly gone to the mattresses. A group of pagan inmates in Florida demanded that their captors supply them with a wooden altar, a sword, and a naked woman to dance in the moonlight. After an Alabama inmate requested the “Satanic Book of Rituals,” a judge who perused the book nixed it on the grounds that “the fertility ritual includes the sacrifice of a female virgin, preferably a Christian,” and that other rituals required candles made from the fat of unbaptized infants. (The prisoner’s lawyer responded that his client “doesn’t want candles from the fat of unbaptized babies. Wax would be fine.”)

Some religions, in fact, seem invented by prisoners simply to garner benefits. In one incident, recounted by the Legal Times, 300 members of something called the Church of the New Song asked for marijuana, Harvey’s Bristol Cream, and $6,000 worth of filet mignon–all needed in the interest of a “crucial religious ceremony.”

Now I’m not suggesting that CAIR has cynically invented religious requirements. But I am suggesting that if prison officials must, say, construct a private bidet just for Muslim inmates, where will it end? Every religious grievance group will then feel entitled to demand the traditional accoutrements of their own faith. Catholics will insist on bingo parlors, and Lutherans will demand all-you-can-eat Tuna Hotdish. Southern Baptists will hunger-strike if they’re not outfitted with large belt buckles, and Unitarians will riot unless they are supplied Pete Seeger albums.

To find out just how impractical CAIR’s guidelines are, I called one of the nation’s most storied wardens, Burl Cain, of Louisiana’s Angola prison. Angola, also called “The Farm,” is renowned for its prisoners’ rodeo, as well as being the place where more lifers will die (85 percent of its total population ) than in any other prison in the country. Cain talks like the kind of central-casting cracker that you’d expect someone to be who hails from Pitkin, Louisiana, “a little town of pine trees and poor folks–we don’t even have a caution light.” But Cain, himself a Southern Baptist, is remarkably pluralistic, believing not only that religion is a sustaining agent, but a civilizing one. (Cain points out that if Muslim inmates are practicing their faith, they’re likely staying out of trouble, which means fewer headaches for him.) He’s studied the Koran all the way through, believes Islam is a religion of peace, and has no patience for militants who practice it any other way: “I just straighten them out and say, ‘Boys, go read your book. That ain’t what it says.'”

Cain says he does everything he can to accommodate his own Muslim population (about 500 of his 5,100 prisoners). “They think we’re all going to hell, we think they are,” Cain says, “but we respect each other. I don’t judge lest you be judged. [The Muslim prisoners] are some of my favorite people.” Cain gives his Muslim prisoners prayer mats, and has contracted with an imam, who comes in from Baton Rouge. He lets his inmates observe Ramadan, and feeds them pork-less meals.

But when I read the CAIR recommendations to Cain, he is nearly beside himself. Of the Mecca/toilet issue, he says, “In a cell, they can face Mecca, and if the toilet’s in the way, they just got to face Mecca over the toilet. If they object to that, I’m not going to tear out the toilet and turn the cell around.” As for contraband searches of holy books, Cain will check them whenever he needs to check them. “I’ve had hacksaw blades brought in the covers of the Bible–King James Version,” says Cain. “We search every book. If it comes in, we gonna look at it, and we’re not going to (wait for) the imam to come with us to look at it.”

CAIR’s preoccupation with modesty and private showers is a nightmare, says Cain. Having open showers under the watchful eye of guards is the only way prison rape can be curtailed. Likewise, issuing oils and perfumes to Muslims only would encourage a mass religious conversion of “the gal-boys” (more commonly known as “prison bitches”), always looking for a leg-up when it comes to accentuating their softer sides.

As for taking an Eid holiday from working the fields, Cain says he has to limit days off to the federal calendar, otherwise, “I would have a medley of prisoner’s days off for this, that, and everything else–pretty soon, everything would be a holiday.” And if the visitors of Muslim inmates insist they only be patted down by same-sex guards, well, says Cain, “Visiting is a privilege, not a right. Comply with rules for visiting, or don’t come. Talk on the phone.”

Aside from the ways in which he already accommodates his Muslim inmates, Cain says the rest of CAIR’s guidelines are just “not practical.” Some are plain outrageous–even if he wanted to implement them, from a security standpoint, “the logistics would be impossible.” But Cain doesn’t want CAIR to take it personally. He says he’s heard of a lot of Primitive Baptists who like to handle snakes. “But I’m certainly not going to allow any snakes in this prison.” For CAIR, he has one final suggested guideline of his own: “If you’re going to get into being so strict and radical, the best thing to do is don’t come to prison. Then you don’t have to worry about it.”

Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.