Call to Prayer
Prisoners Converting to Orthodox Islam in Growing Numbers

By Sadia Razaq

Derek Johnson grew up in a Christian family and flirted with the idea of converting to the Five Percenters, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, as a teenager. But it was not until Johnson was incarcerated in Comstock State Prison, serving an eight-year sentence for knifing a man in a soured drug deal, that he converted to Sunni Islam and changed his name to Abdul Rahman.

"You wake up one day and you take a hard look at the cell you are living in," said Abdul Rahman, 53, his gaze resting on the marble prayer beads moving through his fingers. "You look at the things going on around you and you think that there has to be something better for me out there. And then you find the peace that you have been seeking for so long."

Randy Kearse, who was incarcerated at Elmira Correctional Facility for assault and grand larceny, and Shawn Roberts, who served time at Watertown Correctional Facility for armed robbery of a van carrying diamonds, share similar stories. They both left Christianity, converted to Islam and took the names that they now go by, Bilal Abdullah and Jihad Abdul Aziz.

These three men are part of a larger story: Islam is the fastest growing major religion in the world, in and out of prisons. Every day, five times a day, as the Islamic call to prayer fills the streets of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, it also brings together prisoners who have converted to Islam while incarcerated, nearly 10,000 miles away.

The prison population in the United States has risen 40 percent over the past seven years to more than 2 million. While the vast majority of inmates in federal prisons are still Christian, the number of Sunni Muslim inmates has increased from 5,116 to 7,261, a 42 percent increase, over the past five years, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. As Islam has increasingly moved into the federal prison system, it has found a stronghold among black inmates. Of the Muslims incarcerated, an estimated 6,285 or 87 percent are black.

In some states, such as New York, more than 20 percent of the incarcerated population is Muslim, according to statistics compiled by the American Correctional Association, an umbrella organization working on all facets of corrections and criminal justice in federal and state prisons. Specifically, of the 56,000 black inmates incarcerated in New York State prisons, an estimated 14,000 are adherents of orthodox Islam, according to Sheikh Ismail Raheem, ministerial program coordinator for Islamic Affairs at the New York State Department of Corrections.

Abdul Rahman is not surprised by the growth of Islam in prisons, especially among black inmates. "Islam requires a man to restructure his life," said Abdul Rahman, the father of nine children, who is now working as a chaplain for the prison system. "From reciting the five daily prayers to lowering your gaze from the pornography hanging on the cell walls of inmates, Islam forces disciplined behavior from a man."

"Islam puts forward a format to live by," said Raheem, 58, who grew up in a non-practicing environment. "As a religion it comes with a discipline, a guide for a way to live life. Following that blueprint leaves no room for the drinking, the drugs or the women."

For Abdul Rahman, life before taking the shahada, a declaration of faith pronounced by a new convert, in 1978 was anything but disciplined. By the time Abdul Rahman was 7, an embittered ex-lover had killed his father, leaving his mother to bring up four children as a single parent. Less than five years later, Abdul Rahman was living out of a garbage bag and sleeping in abandoned buildings.

"There was no Islam there," Abdul Rahman said, the muscles in his face tensing. "In its place there was drinking booze, smoking dope and sex. That is all that was there. Nothing more. And so you did the same things that everyone else was doing. You would lose yourself to the alcohol and drugs and drown yourself in the women and gang wars."

Abdul Rahman found protection from the streets by entering the ranks of the Imperial Lords, one of several gangs that were prevalent in his Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. "It could have been the Black Diamonds, the Chaplains or the Lords," Abdul Rahman said. "With each of them the story would have come out the same."

Abdul Rahman was in and out of prison. In 1965, he received his first sentence, 18 months at Rikers Island for a stabbing. "This was what we did," Abdul Rahman said. "One of the Imperial Lords threw me a knife and I got busy with it."

After being released Abdul Rahman fell back into the drinking, drugs and violence that had characterized his life. "After I got out, I went back to Brooklyn," he said, his beige thobe falling loosely from his broad shoulders. "The neighborhood was flooded with angel dust and heroin. It was the same in Brownsville, East New York and Williamsburg. I was waiting to see something else."

That turning point came for Abdul Rahman during his incarceration at Comstock Prison for second-degree manslaughter. "This time, I was so tired," Abdul Rahman said. "Coming through this ghetto life was exhausting. And I wanted something different."

According to Robert Dannin, associate professor of metropolitan studies at New York University, black inmates, such as Abdul Rahman, often turn to Islam because it is seen as coming from the outside, as something novel.

"These men are coming from families that are nominally Christian," Dannin said. "And being a part of something that goes on once a week has not changed a single thing about their lives. Islam is a pedagogy that reorganizes the life of a prisoner in a way that Christianity has not been able to. They gravitate toward Islam because it requires ritualized behavior, such as making prayer five times a day. It governs every aspect of life."

For Abdul Rahman, that something came less than six months later, as he stumbled into a group of orthodox Muslims praying. "At that point I was just drawn to Islam," he said. "It was a natural conversion. Before anyone had even said anything to me. I did not know what they were doing, but I thought, whatever that group of men is doing, I was going to be a part of."

For a new adherent of Islam, some of the first changes that take place are ones that transform the physical space of the cells they are confined to.

"For an inmate, Islam begins in the cell," Dannin said. "Because of the prayer, a Muslim has to keep his cell clean, the floor well scrubbed. This reorganization of personal space corresponds to a changed attitude toward the body, a new code of personal cleanliness. It is this new self-discipline that can be used to compete with the prison discipline."

Whereas in prison the discipline is centered on a physical count of the prisoners five times a day, Raheem said, for a Muslim it is centered on the five daily prayers. "Islam provides a way of getting outside of that system."

According to Manning Marable, director of the African-American studies department at Columbia University, black inmates gravitate toward Islam for several other reasons. The first is that Islam offers human beings who are in inhumane conditions the door through which they can find personal strength to sustain themselves.

The second is that Islam only asks that you do a few things, Dr. Marable said, the first and foremost being that you submit, which on a spiritual level, removes an inmate from the physical chains that confine him.

The third is that in theory Islam is a religion of brotherhood, something that for many blacks Christianity has preached, but has failed to achieve. "In its theory, Islam is anti-racist," Dr. Marable said. "For a Muslim it is not that color ceases to exist, but the stigmatization of color does not exist. In Islam, there is no demonization based on color or ethnicity. If implemented without any perversion, Islam transcends racism."

For Bilal Abdullah, 37, it was the yearning for that same sense of brotherhood that brought him to Islam while serving what would be his last of over a dozen sentences. But this time, Abdullah was tired of living the streets and the alcohol and drugs that thrived there. And like Abdul Rahman, he wanted something different.

"Living that way had worn me down," said Abdullah, who now runs a small store next to a mosque in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. "You always had to watch your back. It was the same in prison, even with black inmates. Come in with a new pair of sneakers and you got other blacks trying to get them from you."

But Abdullah saw something poles apart from that among a certain group of black inmates, which he later learned were believers of orthodox Islam.

"Never seen black people come together like that," Abdullah said. "The way they watched out for each other and the brotherhood they had. It touched my heart."

The point of conversion for Abdullah came in 1992 during an altercation with a Puerto Rican member of the Latin Kings. Often alone, Abdullah said, the Muslim brothers saw that he had no protection.

"They intervened for me," said Abdullah, running his fingers through his dark, chin-length beard. "For no other reason, than to bring justice. Nobody bothers the Muslims if there is a strong jama'a, community of believers. Any time there is a dispute, they call the Muslims to negotiate."

What has held Abdullah to Islam since his release over nine years ago is that same feeling of brotherhood coupled with a renewed purpose in life, things he believes he could have only found through his accepting Islam.

"You come to the mosque for prayer and there you see black and white, shoulder to shoulder, coming together simply because it is the command of Allah," Abdullah said. "Before Islam, I would have ended up back in prison, learning something new. Someone tells you they got this much money doing it this way. Next thing you know, you got a gun in your hand. Before Islam, I used to hang out on the street corner, smoke a blunt just to get a laugh. Now, as a Muslim, there is always something for me to do."

For Jihad Abdul Aziz, the journey to Islam was similar to that of Abdul Rahman and Abdullah. Abdul Aziz, 30, grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. By the time Abdul Aziz was 8, he was wrapped up in alcohol, drugs and gambling.

"The neighborhood was chaotic," said Abdul Aziz, who now works as an auto mechanic. "The potential for violence was there for every minute. People selling dope, doing drugs or just killing."

While Abdul Aziz was serving a three-year sentence at Watertown Correctional Facility for the armed robbery of a transport van carrying $40,000 worth of diamonds, he was given a book called, "Towards Understanding Islam," by a fellow inmate.

"I was in the bing at the time," said Abdul Aziz, his light green thobe touching the concrete floor of the mosque. "Being there gives you time to think. It felt like I was searching for something. And what that book was saying, hit me."

When Abdul Aziz was let out of the bing, a solitary unit in which an inmate is kept in lockdown for 23 hours, he sought out the Muslims, who he found reciting a verse from the Qur'an, the holy book for Muslims, that is repeated over and over in which Allah says, "Which is it, the favors of your lord, that ye deny."

"They were reciting in Arabic, so I could not understand the meaning at the time, but I knew that I had never heard anything so beautiful," Abdul Aziz said. "I fell to my knees and took my shahada and the tranquillity hit me."

These days Abdul Aziz is focused on going back into the prisons to pass on what he has learned. And although Islam is taking hold in New York State prisons, Abdul Aziz realizes that not all converts are sincere in their faith, with some inmates converting simply for the protection offered by fellow Muslims.

"There are some who are truly guided and leave the prison system," Abdul Aziz said. "For them this world becomes a prison. For those that do not believe, this world seems a paradise."