Read on Twitter
Why I firmly believe Islam supports prison abolition: a thread
I am a Muslim before anything else, and my religion teaches me to have humility, spread the truth, and practice fairness. Prisons are enormities that are among the worst forms of oppression and represent everything that my religion denounces.
Firstly, I will summarize arguments made by Jāved Aḥmad Ghāmidī, a Pakistani religious scholar, jurist and influential public intellectual. His most significant critique of the carceral system was published in Urdu, entitled Qayd kī sazā (Prison as Punishment), in 1989.
(1)Historically, prison existed in Islamic civilization, but with strictly limited periods of confinement since confinement was generally not meant to punish, but temporarily detain. In fact, premodern Islamic legal texts are often reluctant to endorse prison as punishment at all
(2)Prisons are institutions that “human beings have devised for themselves.” This detaches carceral punishment from any Divine mandate, disconnecting it from religious law and removing concerns about its “sanctity.”
(3) In Islamic history, people were only confined awaiting trial. Extended imprisonment as penalty for criminal behavior originated in Western countries only a few centuries ago, then spread to other parts of the world because of Western culture’s global hegemony.
(4)Prison inflicts serious, if not tortuous, emotional harm by depriving individuals of love and affection from their closest kin. The individual is forced to suppress their intuitive desire for these emotional connections, a hardship that Ghāmidī says even God never demands.
(5) Prison, a human construct, imposes ungodly restrictions on prisoners, making it in many respects inhumane.
(6) Children with imprisoned parents suffer the trauma of visiting them in prison, locked behind bars in a cage. Ghāmidī returns to the idea of perpetual harm, noting the child’s trauma is renewed with each visit, detrimentally shaping their personality.
(7) There is “no conception in Islamic law’s core sources of confining people to prison cells for years on end.” The implication seems to be that any government that uses prison as punishment diminishes its claims to being “Islamic.”
Interesting to note that Ghāmidī wrote his piece when American “tough on crime” rhetoric was peaking and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 were passed.
Further reasoning: During the time of the beloved Prophet Muhammad (saw), prisoners were free to come and go as the pleased to Friday prayer, with the rest of society, every week. They were never confined to cages, dehumanized, or disassociated from society.
Furthermore, the Prophet Muhammad (saw) forbade profiting off of prisoners which is the primary purpose prisons (both private and public) serve today.
(1) Prophet Muhammad (saw) said: “No man forsakes a Muslim when his rights are being violated or his honour is being belittled except that Allah will forsake him at a place in which he would love to have His help.
(2) And no man helps a Muslim at a time when his honour is being belittled or his rights violated except that Allah will help him at a place in which he loves to have His help”.
I understand we cannot uphold Islamic criminal law in a western society, I am simply expressing all the reasons Islam supports prison abolition. Not the abolition of punishment altogether, but punishment through the prison system we have in place today.
