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>> 19 2 Islam in Prison As with many lofty ideas, the restorative power of religion in prison began with a friendly conversation over a beer. In 1786, as Americans struggled with postwar economic depression, Benjamin Rush, a distinguished Philadelphia physician and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, came upon a group of “wheelbarrow men” cleaning the streets outside his house. Street cleaning was a requirement of inmates at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail under the recently enacted penal code of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , as was the wearing of a distinctive garb, a shaved head, and a wheelbarrow to push while working. Being curious, Rush offered the men mugs of molasses beer, and while talking with them Rush found that he not only had sympathy for their plight, but also respect for the dignity with which they bore their humiliation.1 As a result of this incident, Rush began to speak out against the penal laws. He first did so in a March 9, 1787, speech before a group of well-known Philadelphians belonging to the Society for Promoting Political Inquires, which held its meetings at the home of Rush’s friend, eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin. Influenced by the writings of the English prison reformer John Howard, who favored imprisonment for all criminals as a substitute for physical punishment, Rush advanced a radical proposition that would ultimately set a new international standard for penology—that “the only design of punishment is the reformation of the criminal.”2 Central to this proposition was the restorative power of religion. “Happy condition of human affairs,” Rush proclaimed in his speech, “when humanity, philosophy and Christianity, shall unite their influence to teach men, that they are brethren; and to prevent their preying any longer upon each other!”3 Believing that criminality was caused by the stresses of society, Rush recommended removing criminals from all harmful associations and inculcating them with moral principles from the Bible. Toward this end, Rush envisioned the construction of what he originally called a “house of repentance.” His plan called for individual cells for the solitary confinement of prisoners, a room for worship conducted by a chaplain, and a garden for growing food “cultivated from their own hands”—all designed to create genuine regret and penitence in the criminal’s heart. Thus was born the term penitentiary.4 20 > 21 he took up with a band of gypsies and then joined a crew of merchant seamen at the age of sixteen. Several years later, Drew arrived in Egypt where, during a visit to the Pyramid of Cheops, he was introduced to Islam. The experience tested Drew’s courage, it is told, and he emerged as Nobel Drew Ali. After reading the Circle Seven Koran, he dreamed of a religion “for the uplifting of fallen mankind,” especially the “lost-found nation of American blacks.” Upon awakening from his dream, he became the Prophet Nobel Drew Ali. In 1912 or 1913, Drew Ali returned to the States and settled in Newark, New Jersey, where he founded the Canaanite Temple. After his introduction to the writings of the Sudanese-Egyptian intellectual Duse Muhammad Ali, the editor of The African Times and Orient Review, which was a journal championing national liberation struggles and promoting solidarity among “nonwhites” around the world, Drew Ali’s house of worship became known as the Moorish Science Temple. He preached a revolutionary doctrine holding that black Americans are descended from the Moors, a North African tribe whose practice of Islam dates to their invasion of Spain in 711.8 Their ancestors were the Canaanites, descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, whose progenies inhabited West Africa where they established the Moorish Empire that later ruled most of Europe and Asia. Africans who were brought to America as chattel slaves in the 16th century were Muslims; therefore, Drew Ali argued that the original religion of black Americans is Islam, not Christianity . Slavery had erased this cultural memory, however, and blacks came to accept the label “Negro” and the conditions of bondage.9 This racist social institution could have been avoided, Drew Ali argued, had blacks remembered their original identity as Moors. For historical proof, Drew Ali cited the Black Laws of Virginia, which legally exempted Moroccan nationals (or Moors) from slavery. In 1774, the founding fathers of the Constitution had declared that only Negros were subject to slavery. Legally, then, Moors could not be counted as slaves. According to legend, George Washington was aware of the precedent...

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