\u201cThey think that they are us, but they are nothing like us.\u201d<\/p>\n
An insight or two into the politics of Muslims in prison might be gleaned from unpeeling this short sentence, which was said to me off the cuff by a man I know well and whom in prose I call Baraka. Like all parties in this brief account, Baraka is to be found at Pennsylvania\u2019s State Correctional Institution at Graterford, a maximum-security prison not far from Philadelphia. Starting in 2005, in pursuit of my doctorate, I spent sixteen months doing ethnographic fieldwork in Graterford\u2019s chapel.<\/p>\n
So I ask: who are these two theys\u2014the they who are doing the mistaking and the they who are being mistaken for another? And who is us? Let us tackle the first person first.<\/p>\n
US IS BARAKA\u2019S OWN Muslim faction. If imperfectly, this group is best designated \u201cthe Warith Deen guys\u201d after its one-time affiliation with the defunct Graterford mosque, Masjid Warith Deen Muhammad, which was named after Elijah Muhammad\u2019s son. As is a common profile for African-American Muslims of a certain age, these men grew up in the Nation of Islam (NOI) before converting en masse to Sunni Islam in 1975 at Warith Deen\u2019s behest following Elijah\u2019s death.<\/p>\n