The Prison System Can’t Stop Discriminating Against Muslims

Slate, June 5, 2023: The Prison System Can’t Stop Discriminating Against Muslims

“For years at Lovelock Correctional Institution in Nevada, Jummah prayers were provided to Muslims every Friday. They weren’t always on time, but they were provided. Fridays are a very special day for Muslims, and are often referred to as mini Eids. And with that comes a special prayer, Jummah, which features a sermon followed by a short prayer in the middle of the day.

“But in the summer of 2018, Said Elmajzoub, a Muslim who is incarcerated at Lovelock, noticed something different. Jummah services weren’t being provided for Muslims anymore. ‘The chaplain said that the only time they would be able to give us was 8:00 in the morning on Friday, but he knew that would be wrong,’ Elmajzoub told me. ‘So, I filed the necessary paperwork and said please just give us any room. We just need an hour on Friday afternoon.’

“Filing grievances didn’t help, so he filed a lawsuit. A year later, the Council on American–Islamic Relations got involved in his case.

“‘There was a strong hint that Muslims lost their rights to Jummah prayer because of a belief by the chaplain at Lovelock facilities that he thinks Islam to be a racist, Black-supremacy organization,’ said Justin Sadowsky, a trial attorney at the CAIR Legal Defense Fund. This belief was memorialized in writing. After an interfaith meeting in 2018, Lovelock chaplain Scott Davis wrote notes that were later presented in court as evidence suggesting that he had offered an excuse to the group for why Jummah prayers were ending and felt unable to tell them the real reason. ‘I couldn’t say in front of all them that it is because they teach racism, hate, black supremacy,’ he wrote. ‘There would have been a riot.’ (I reached out to Davis and other prison officials at Lovelock, but they didn’t respond for comment.)”

Additional reading:

Southern Poverty Law Center, December 9, 2022: California Trains Cops, Prison Guards with Anti-Muslim Video

Time, May 12, 2021: 'I Don’t Think You’re Going to Be Eating Tonight.' Muslims Describe Ramadan in U.S. Prisons

Vox, February 15, 2021: The many ways Muslim prisoners are denied religious rights in prison

Garrett A. Felber, 2017: “Those Who Say Don’t Know and Those Who Know Don’t Say”: The Nation of Islam and the Politics of Black Nationalism, 1930-1975