Islam in prison

A wonderful guy I know volunteers his time at the local jails doing Christian Minsitry. In a conversation about four years ago, he told me that radical Islamists have found their way into US prisons and are converting prisioners to their brand of Islam. He told me of cases where other prisoners that openly profess to be Christian have their faces cut to mark them as enemies of Islam. His fear was, when the converted prisoners were released, they would return to the inner city to spread radical Islam.

The four men arrested yesterday in an attempt to blow up a Synagog were all fruit born of that nasty tree.

This brings me to Gantantamo. Bringing the most radical that Islam has to offer into the US prisons would further add to what is already occurng in our prison system.

and it's one of the wretched things about our prisons that while this is going on, Christian prison programs to get people off drugs and turn their lives around are being found unconstitutional and thrown out.

What's really awful is that the Islamists appeal to and thrive off of the racial animosity in prisons. You get white power "Christian" hate groups and cell block race wars, etc., and then you get the racial appeal that Islam isn't "whitey's" religion but is authentically African. That's what got Malcolm X into Islam half a century ago.

And it's just like our dumb egalitarian/relativist system to say that we can't expect government to distinguish Episcopalians from Church of White Power hatemongers or peace-preaching Muslims from race-baiting jihadists.

Because that would be "unfair" blah blah blah.

VicarJoe wrote:
What's really awful is that the Islamists appeal to and thrive off of the racial animosity in prisons. You get white power "Christian" hate groups and cell block race wars, etc., and then you get the racial appeal that Islam isn't "whitey's" religion but is authentically African. That's what got Malcolm X into Islam half a century ago.

Especially when you consider what happened to Malcolm X after he went to Mecca and broke with the Black Muslims.

This reminds me that there is still a deep gulf in America based in race. During the election, my black relatives stated several times in my hearing that if Obama didn't win, it would be because of racism. I don't think that this is just media-prodiced on their part--it comes from a deep place of frustration and anger and daily incidents (let me put it this way--no one thinks I'm my nieces' nanny when I'm out with them the way they do when my black SIL is out with my kids alone. Is that hideous? No, but it speaks to something in our sense of who people can be, and it's still hurtful even if that's not the intention).

So my point is that the same need the Black Muslims filled for Malcolm X way back when is obviously alive and well, and like Joe pointed out, a good corrective and creator of common ground, Christianity, is getting edged out in the places where it's needed most. Part of the beauty of Christinaity is that it has the ability to move us past race--and I think this last election, and what we're seeing now with the fear-to-roast-Obama--shows that we're clearly not past it.

Being bi-racial, I was 'expected' to vote for Obama both by the white community and the black community. I received a harder time by the black community when I said I wasn't voting for him. I learned quite quickly to not get involved in political discussions.

AND I voted for him!! But my husband's family are like fundamentalist-Democrats. When I once said I didn't think George W. was nearly so stupid as they were making him out to be, having actually listened to many of his press conferences, well

"racist" so many times on politcal boards merely for saying, I was not going to vote for Obama, that it finally went in one ear and out the other. And when he was elected and I still wasn't happy my white liberal friends would say, "You just have to get over it." I really had to button my lip to not say, "I think the man is a complete fraud, lair and a narcissist and I'm not going to get over it. Did you ever "get over" George Bush?" I never DID understand why the fact that he was African-American meant I should "get over" my major problems with his political background, his policies and his behavior.