UK policy towards Muslim prisoners counterproductive, study finds

A gaping hole in the Government’s policy to tackle terrorism has been exposed by the first in-depth study of the experiences of Muslim prisoners that found attempts to curb the supposed growth of radical Islam in jails were counterproductive.
Author of the report, lecturer in Antropology of Religion, Gabriele Marranci, also challenged claims made that Muslims are radicalised by imams while in prison, saying that he found “no evidence to suggest that Muslim chaplains are behaving or preaching in a way that facilitates radicalization.”
“On the contrary, my findings suggest that they are extremely important in preventing dangerous forms of extremism. However, the distrust that they face, both internally and externally, is jeopardising their important function,” said Marranci, who is the founding editor of the Anthropological Journal of Islamic Studies, Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life.
The findings were also endorsed by one of the Muslim chaplains interviewed in the four year study, Imam Khalil Kazi, who said that his personal experience at HM Prison Leeds for over a deacde was that faith-based projects can reduce re-offending and assist individuals to become law abiding citizens of society. “It is a common myth that faith is used as a tool to radicalise young Muslim prisoners to become radicalised and extremist,” Kazi told The Muslim News.
The study revealed that Muslim prisoners are subjected to stricter security and included restrictions on communal prayers and reading the Qur’an, which were found to backfire. “In particular, the decision in high security prisons to suspend access to certain TV programmes or newspapers has produced the opposite result that the establishment desired,” Marranci said.
It was instead suggested that it was the lack of freedom of expression suffered by Muslim prisoners and the continuous atmosphere of suspicion around them, which has the “effect of increasing a sense of frustration and depression that a strong view of Islam can help to overcome.”
The lecturer from Aberdeen University in Scotland held interviews with over 170 current and former Muslim prisoners while researching how being locked up behind bars impacted on the identity of Muslim prisoners in the face of being singled out for stricter restrictions than other inmates. “Muslims who openly show their Muslim identity through symbols suffer more discrimination in general, from both staff and other prisoners, than those who keep a low profile,” he said. Even growing a beard was interpreted in almost all of the establishments he visited as the “radicalisation of the individual.”
“The respective Prison Services have tried to do something to address the issue of radicalisation but they’re heading in the wrong direction,” Marranci warned. He further warned about the dangers of Muslim prisoners having less support when they leave jail. “The mass media over emphasise and politicians overestimate the danger of extremism within prison as well as the danger of extremists’ recruitment within prison, overlooking the real problem: the process of re-integration within society,” he suggested.

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=2926