UC Irvine

This paper will offer a theoretical framework to understand why Islam, as it currently exists within the US prison system, is associated with radicalism and treated with surveillance and suppression. By exploring the history of sharia and complicating existing ideas of legal pluralism and religious tolerance, this paper argues that the position of sharia is one that is incommensurable with Western governance. Thus, as early incarcerated Muslim activists in the 1950s and 60s used sharia in their fight against prison conditions, they cemented an antagonism between Islam and carceral authority that still lives on in the treatment of incarcerated Muslims today. This tension manifests itself in the religious surveillance and suppression incarcerated Muslims face today, and also helps account for the trouble Islamic advocacy groups have as they attempt to reframe Islam as a moderating religious force within the prison. These tensions lead to a framework and a set of guiding questions for interviews with Islamic advocacy groups, prison chaplains, and incarcerated Muslims themselves, in order to better understand the status of Islam within prisons and its current associations with potential terrorism and violence.