A seven-year-old prison chaplain group recently was awarded a one-of-its-kind, $25,000 state subcontract to minister to a rapidly growing faith behind bars: Islam.
But the all-volunteer Muslim Chaplain Services wants more state funding so it can hire imams to serve as prison staff chaplains, as do Protestant clergy. “We just want a level playing field,” said Carroll Abdul-Malik, the group’s president.
The Chaplain Service of the Churches of Virginia, a Protestant group established in 1920, has the full, $780,000 contract with the Virginia Department of Corrections to administer religious programs in prisons for inmates of all faiths.
Relations between the two chaplain groups are cordial, and they agree on the need for Islamic experts in prisons.
So, too, do some secular experts with concerns beyond the spiritual.
Mark Hamm, a terrorism expert with Indiana State University, conducted a study on Muslims in prison for the National Institute of Justice and said that “Islam, by all accounts, is the fastest-growing religion among prisoners in the Western world, including the United States.”
And a key finding of a 2006 national study co-authored by the University of Virginia’s Critical Incident Analysis Group, a think tank on national threats, was that “the inadequate number of Muslim religious service providers increases the risk of radicalization.”
Hamm said it is estimated that up to 40,000 of the 2.4 million prisoners in the U.S. convert to Islam each year. Muslim Chaplain Services believes there are 1,700 to 2,500 Muslims in Virginia’s 32,000-inmate system. Prison authorities do not dispute that estimate.
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After the Sept. 11 attacks, some in Congress and elsewhere grew concerned about the potential for the spread of jihadism along with Islam in the nation’s prisons.
But Hamm found that “overall, Islam has a beneficial effect on inmates. Most of these inmates come to prison with little or no . . . spiritual grounding whatsoever.” Islam offers order to their lives and a sense of identity and belonging, he said.
The “radicalization” that occurs often is the result of “prison or jailhouse Islam,” twisted versions of the faith spread by those who are not necessarily well-informed about the tenets of Islam and some of whom have gang-related or other nonreligious agendas, Hamm said.
Asghar Goraya, executive director of Muslim Chaplain Services, says Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance, not extremism. A goal of his group is educating believers who may have been given incorrect information by other well-meaning but misinformed inmates.
In addition, Sa’ad El-Amin, a former Richmond lawyer on the Muslim chaplain group’s board of directors, believes more needs to be done to foster communication between staff and Muslim inmates.
“We see an accident, a train wreck ahead, if this thing is not resolved,” El-Amin said.
El-Amin and Abdul-Malik, are former inmates themselves. El-Amin surrendered his City Council seat in July 2003, pleading guilty to a federal tax-fraud conspiracy charge. He served 32 months and was released in August 2006.
Abdul-Malik was released in 1978 after serving seven years for robbery. “Before I went in, I was first kin to an atheist,” he said. Then he converted while behind bars. “It changed my life and I’ve been out for 31 years and I’ve been a volunteer in prison for 29 years.”
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In 2006, Gene Johnson, director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, invited the Muslim group to brief officials in prisons across the state about rituals, prayers, holy days, dietary regulations and other pertinent aspects of the Islamic faith.
“The sessions have been well-received with lots of positive feedback,” said Larry Traylor, a department spokesman.
Goraya said the group has worked to clear up misconceptions and head off problems. For example, he said, “a question came up during the training: ‘Is it prohibited for a Muslim male to obey the orders of a female?’”
Many corrections officers are women, and male Muslim inmates must obey them, Goraya said.
But some Muslim inmates have the wrong idea. Often, he said, the cultural traditions of patriarchal societies that practice Islam get mixed up with the tenets of the faith.
The Muslim group, founded in 2003, has a dozen volunteers -- none of them imams.
When an inmate needs an imam, efforts are made to get one, but that can be difficult because the Islamic faith leaders are not compensated for travel to a prison, Goraya said. “They have to work for a living,” he added.
Chaplain Service of the Churches of Virginia, supported by various Protestant churches, individuals and foundations, started working in prisons in 1920, at no cost to the state. In 2002, the General Assembly began appropriating money from the inmate commissary fund to help.
The arrangement is an unusual one, because Virginia may be the only prison system, or among just a handful of state systems, without professional chaplains.
The money comes out of the pockets of inmates from commissary purchases of chips, sodas and other items. The Department of Corrections is concerned that so much money is being taken out that the commissary fund, which is used for other inmate needs, that it could be depleted.
Cecil McFarland, the Protestant group’s director, said that in addition to the $780,000 from the commissary fund, the group expects to receive about $500,000 in non-inmate funds this year, lower than in past years because of the economy.
Among other things, the money is used to staff adult prisons with 13 full-time and 19 part-time chaplains, and three part-time chaplains for juvenile correctional facilities.
“We’ve been working with Asghar Goraya for years,” said McFarland of the Muslim group, which has the only chaplaincy subcontract. McFarland’s group coordinates religious programs for inmates of all other faiths, including Catholics and Jews.
McFarland said his governing board is not concerned with money going to an Islamic group because “this relieves our chaplains of a lot of responsibilities. . . . They have assumed the responsibility of serving the Muslim population in prison.”
“It’s really a good thing for everybody,” he said.
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But the problem, as Muslim Chaplain Services sees it, is that $25,000 -- used primarily to pay for religious literature -- is not enough to support a single staff Muslim chaplain, and the Protestant group will not hire one.
In addition to the $25,000, the Muslim group also receives about $12,000 to $15,000 a year via fundraisers. But virtually all expenses come out of the pockets of volunteers. They also operate a five-person halfway house in Richmond.
Goraya said there are many situations in which even the most well-meaning staff and Christian clergy cannot help a Muslim inmate. Full-time Muslim chaplains are needed in prisons just as Christian ones are, he said.
The group asked the Department of Corrections for $611,560 to get Muslim staff chaplains in prisons but was turned down.
On Sept. 3, the department modified its contract with the Protestant group so that it could receive the $25,000 subcontract. The Muslim group says it has spoken with some area legislators who told them it is unlikely the General Assembly will find more money for them.
Goraya and Abdul-Malik said they now are considering asking for some of the money -- $4.6 million in the year that ended June 30 -- made on surcharges imposed on inmate telephone calls. That money, however, always has gone directly into the state general fund.
They are also considering a lawsuit, El-Amin said. “What you have is the [Department of Corrections] treating Islam like it’s a second-class religion because we’re not on equal footing fundingwise, or staffwise, or accesswise,” he said.
Muslim inmates buy goods in prison commissaries, too, El-Amin said.
Hamm, the terrorism expert, said a good chaplain of any faith can make a large difference in a prison. “It seems a shame that any state doesn’t have a paid cadre of prison chaplains.
“I’ve been in some prisons where the chapel is hopping between 8 a.m. and whenever the yard closes -- one activity after another, Indians, Muslims, Christians,” he said.
“And then I’ve been in other prisons where the chapel is a ghost yard. It just sits there. You wonder who’s minding the store and what lessons there are here to learn on how to run a chaplaincy.”