Concern in United States

Concern over jailhouse conversions to Islam first rose in 2001 when Imam Warith Deen Umara, Islamic chaplain for the New York State prison system, was reported to have praised the September 11 attacks. This prompted members of Congress to call for an investigation of Islam in the nation’s prisons.

In a 2004 report, the Justice Department faulted the prison system for failing to protect against “infiltration by religious extremists.” However, the report made clear that the problem was not radical chaplains, but, rather extremist inmates running worship services.

Mark S. Hamm, a criminologist at Indiana State University

Indiana State University

Indiana State University is a public university located in Terre Haute, Indiana, United States.The Princeton Review has named Indiana State as one of the "Best in the Midwest" seven years running, and the College of Education's Graduate Program was recently named as a 'Top 100' by U.S...

, describes a phenomenon he calls "prison Islam." This consists of "small gang-like cliques that use cut-and-paste versions of the Koran" to give a religious patina to violent and criminal activities. Hamm has identified five such examples since 2005, notably the 2005 Los Angeles bomb plot

2005 Los Angeles bomb plot

The 2005 Los Angeles bomb plot was a 2005 effort by a group of ex-convicts calling themselves Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheed to bomb several military bases, a number of synagogues, and an Israeli consulate in California....

.

High rate of conversions to Islam

In addition to immigration, the state, federal and local prisons of the United States may be a contributor to the growth of Islam in the country. J. Michael Waller claims that Muslim inmates comprise 17-20% of the prison population, or roughly 350,000 inmates in 2003. He also claims that 80% of the prisoners who "find faith" while in prison convert to Islam. These converted inmates are mostly African American, with a small but growing Hispanic minority. Waller also asserts that many converts are radicalized by outside Islamist

Islamism

Islamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...

 groups linked to terrorism, but other experts suggest that when radicalization does occur it has little to no connection with these outside interests.

Notable converts to Islam in prison

• Malcolm X
  Malcolm X
  Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
  
   - A Civil Rights activist
• Abdul Alim Musa
  Abdul Alim Musa
  Imam Abdul Alim Musa is a Muslim American activist and director of Masjid Al-Islam in Washington, D.C.. He is a member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought and a well-known speaker around the world...
  
   - radical Muslim-American activist
• B.G. Knocc Out
  B.G. Knocc Out
  Al Hasan Naqiyy , better known by his stage name B.G. Knocc Out, is an American rapper known for collaborating with Eazy-E on the 1993 single "Real Muthaphuckkin G's". He is also the younger brother of rapper Dresta, who also collaborated in the song.- Early life and music career :Arlandis Hinton...
  
   - an African-American rapper
• Charles Brooks, Jr.
  Charles Brooks, Jr.
  Charles Brooks, Jr. was a convicted murderer who was the first person executed by the state of Texas since it resumed capital punishment. Brooks was also the first person in United States to be executed using lethal injection.-Biography:Brooks was raised in a well-off Fort Worth, Texas family and...
  
   - convicted murderer; converted to Islam before execution
• Flesh N Bone - A member of the award-winning rap group Bone Thugs N Harmony
• H. Rap Brown
  H. Rap Brown
  Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin , also known as H. Rap Brown, was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, and during a short lived alliance between SNCC , later the Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party...
  
   - former Black Panther
  Black panther
  A black panther is typically a melanistic color variant of any of several species of larger cat. Wild black panthers in Latin America are black jaguars , in Asia and Africa they are black leopards , and in North America they may be black jaguars or possibly black cougars A black panther is...
  
  ; currently in prison for murdering a police officer
• Jeff Fort
  Jeff Fort
  Jeff Fort is a former Chicago gang leader, co-founder of the Black P. Stones gang, and founder of its El Rukn faction. He was convicted in 1987 of conspiring with Libya to perform acts of domestic terrorism.- Biography :...
  
   - former Chicago gang leader; convicted in 1987 of conspiring with Libya to perform acts of domestic terrorism
• Jeffrey Mark Deskovic
  Jeffrey Mark Deskovic
  Jeffrey Mark Deskovic was wrongly convicted in 1990 at the age of seventeen of raping, beating, and strangling Angela Correa, a 15-year-old high school classmate at Peekskill High School.-Biography:...
  
   - served 15-year wrongful imprisonment sentence; exonerated by DNA evidence
• José Padilla - convicted of aiding terrorists in the "Dirty Bomb
  Dirty bomb
  A dirty bomb is a speculative radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the explosion with radioactive material, hence the attribute "dirty"....
  
  " plot
• Kevin James - ringleader of the 2005 Los Angeles bomb plot
  2005 Los Angeles bomb plot
  The 2005 Los Angeles bomb plot was a 2005 effort by a group of ex-convicts calling themselves Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheed to bomb several military bases, a number of synagogues, and an Israeli consulate in California....
  
  
• Mike Tyson
  Mike Tyson
  Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson is a retired American boxer. Tyson is a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles, he was 20 years, 4 months and 22 days old...
  
   - former heavyweight boxing champion

See also

• Religion in United States prisons
  Religion in United States prisons
  Inmates incarcerated in the United States penal system practice a variety of religions. Their basic constitutional right to worship has been reinforced by decades of court decisions and more recently by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act...
  
  
• Islamic Missionary Activity
  Islamic Missionary Activity
  Dawah, Islamic missionary work, means to "invite" to Islam, which is estimated to be the second largest religion after Christianity. After the death of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, from the 7th century onwards, Islam spread rapidly from the Arabian Peninsula to the rest of the world, initially...