Muslim Americans: Incarceration and the struggles that follow insertion into civil life

                “The honest struggle” documents the struggle that a young man encounters when trying to emerge himself back into civilization after being incarcerated. Darrell Davis was incarcerated when he was 18 and was released 24 years later at 42 years old. This man, along with all but 10% of incarcerated Muslims, found his faith behind bars (Khan). Davis explains that he used his faith to stay clean while he was behind bars. As there were lots of opportunities to continue his gang activity behind bars, his faith is what kept him clean and able to re-emerge himself into society to his full potential.

                When he was released, there was a community Muslim program available for him called “Green ReEntry”, which had transitional housing and on-site job training available for him (Khan). Without this program, Davis would have had a much harder time immersing himself back into society. There are a couple of these types of Muslim programs across the countries with the same purpose. Across the country, it appears that the Muslim religion is so very common in our correction facilities due to the common teachings of Islam that already exist within the prison. For example, two rival gangs were rioting in a prison and the Muslim community within that prison paid the debt of which was causing the riot in order to end the violence.

                Much of the inspiration for the ReEntry program comes from Malcom X and his life experiences (Khan). Malcom X too, found his Islam faith while incarcerated. Like many of the Muslims incarcerated today, Malcom X experienced a good amount of racial prejudice and was able to turn his attitude towards prejudice around while incarcerated. Going into prison, he held the belief that violence was the answer to the racial problems that were going on in the country. However, coming out of incarceration he was able to take violence out of his ideal solutions for racial injustice. The change of mind that Malcom X had while incarceration appears to be very common with other young men who come out of incarceration as a converted Muslim.

                The transition from incarceration to civil life is not an easy one for so many reasons. In America, the Muslim communities on the outside want to make it known that they want their fellow Muslims to come home and serve a purpose. Green ReEntry and many other programs are there to help these individuals get through the initial hardship that no one likes to talk about; getting a drivers license, having a little bit of money for food and clothes, having a roof over their heads, and finding a source of transportation and income. Being a part of the Muslim community and finding this faith while incarcerated gives many of these individuals opportunities to realize that they matter and there are people around them who care and want to see them make a difference in their community.

Khan, Aysha. “Film Follows ‘honest Struggle’ of Formerly Incarcerated Muslims Reentering Society.” Religion News Serivce, 27 Nov. 2019, religionnews.com/2019/11/27/film-follows-honest-struggle-of-formerly-incarcerated-muslims-re-entering-society/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2019.

“New UNL religion course embraces diversity, looks to propose common worship place” Mia Azizah

Mia Azizah’s article covers how UNL is starting a course that will focus on how public universities are helping non-Christian religions with their religious practices. It really does not come as a surprise that a lot of universities don’t have places of worship for students outside of Christian faiths because of how based in Christianity America is. What is very interesting is that UNL is not stopping at recognizing the problem, they are creating a course where students are studying the issue and giving actual reports on all public universities, not just a select few. I know in the case of Laramie there is the Islamic Center but not all college towns have such places. I also know that on campus, specifically, there are no places set aside for religious practice. What confuses me is the basis of America is the melting pot, all colors, religions and beliefs are supposed to come together and really what we have is a Christian base with the rest of the religions just around. It’s confusing that with the amount of progress the United States has made, religious rights are still left behind. Professor Max Mueller talks about how non-Christians in UNL have to find their own spaces “literally, in the corners” in order to worship as their religions say. The hope of the class is to make students realize that there are more than just Christians in universities and everybody needs to have the ability to worship otherwise there will be groups who are just left out. The “left out”mindset goes completely against the whole point of the U.S., and shows that whether or not it is intentional, every person who is non-Christian is outside of the “normal society” in the United States. I’m glad that an article was written on this and that a class is actually being taught that will show students exactly how isolated non-Christians are in the United States still.