We are publishing the second part of Jerel Matthew’s essay on Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival by Dr. Maryam Kashani, which explores chapters 3 through the conclusion. Part one is available to read here.
Living my life within the power structure of prison, chapter 3, “Terrorist, Gang Member, and Provocateur” resonated strongly with me. I consider these to be social constructs by the wielders of power that legitimizes the purpose of racism in policing and the deployment of other ideologies to justify the surveillance and control of people of color under the guise of safety and security, in both prison and society.
While in the Cook County Jail, because I resisted the status quo in many different ways, I was placed in a housing unit called Abnormal Behavior Observation (A.B.O.) where I was only allowed to come out for one hour a day and I was constantly surveilled. Everything I did was documented. Out of a total of 12 men in this location, 5 others were Muslims who were also targeted, immobilized, and surveilled.
Reflecting on this while reading this chapter of Kashani’s book, particularly the passages highlighting the sisters Sakina, Kameelah, and Saba’s opposition of the city and portwide surveillance system, moved me to think critically about different forms of surveillance and how it affects us on a personal, interpersonal, and communal level (p. 138). The bulk of contemporary policing is discretionary surveillance of, and ruthless intervention in, the lives of low income people and people of color, while wealthy white people interact with police only by choice.
The fact that there are new technologies that target communities on both sides of prison walls show us that prison struggles are never just about prison, prisons are indeed an extension of our community.
Today, invisible forms of power are circulating all around us, circumscribing and sorting us all into invisible cells that are confining certain populations. Surveillance tactics have evolved, but one of the oldest and most effective forms used in our communities is “informing among us” which Kashani touches on (p. 137). This continues to be a major problem because not only does it stifle movements, it also breeds discontent, selfishness, and suspiciousness among people in the umma. Isolation, torture, and manipulation reflects an ongoing chilliness of this war on our minds and bodies. The fact that there are new technologies that target communities on both sides of prison walls show us that prison struggles are never just about prison, prisons are indeed an extension of our community.
Carcerality is a generalized condition of living in North America, as our deceased elder Martin Sostre pointed out 60 years ago. Surveillance is a crucial aspect of social control and a major component of the expansion of the carceral state. Technologies such as the GTL tablet on which I wrote this entire essay are facilitating new forms of surveillance and control. GTL says on its website that tablets help modify behavior, enable communication, and increase facility security, control, and operational efficiencies. The state is evolving into predictive policing (Predpol), a spatialized algorithmic form that facilitates racial profiling by calculating proxies for race such as neighborhood and location.
It’s important we pay attention to this shift, just as the community paid attention to the domain awareness system, because once this digital carceral structure is built up it may be impossible to undo, making even greater intrusions on our lives, making us all even more susceptible to being flagged, tracked, and possibly captured and held against our will.
The aforementioned are just a couple of emerging carceral technologies that allow state actors to functionally incarcerate people where they live. As Kashani notes in the book, the reconfiguration of “national security” discourse and practices after 9/11 reflects the long-standing anti-Black, anti-Muslim domestic war, while also offering the prison as a method for analyzing and resisting relations of power and techniques of imperialism that shape the world.
In Chapter 4, “Out of Bounds,” Kashani describes intimate distance as a sense and desire for the closeness and proximity typically felt across distances of gender, geography, and time that encompasses a constantly shifting myriad of feelings (p. 162). I love the phrase “intimate distance.” It can be used in many different contexts. This section answered questions that I’ve always wanted to ask some of the sisters and it also made me think critically about the progression of Islam. I understood exactly what Zahrah, a student at Zaytuna cited in the book, was feeling when she stated that she would like to hug Imam Zaid, who was a father figure to her, but she couldn’t, just as I sympathized with the sisters who were trying to figure out what special way they could properly greet the Prophet’s descendant, Habib Umar, when he visited the college.
I have love and admiration for my sisters, whom I learn from and whom I’d like to hug, but I can’t. Our relationship was cultivated from a physical distance dictated not only by Muslim cultural notions of gendered formality, but also the dehumanizing regulations of this carceral environment in which I’m restrained, rules I have had to break to console my crying teenage daughter during visitation.
When it comes to women and moving Islam forward, we have to find a medium between a commitment to reason and literalism to sustain the integrity of Islam, but also promote modern progressive Islam.
When I used to enter Jamaat Ibad-al-Rahman, I was always greeted by my most loyal and trusted brothers with smiles, handshakes, and hugs, but I cannot greet my sisters with any signs of affection. It’s always awkward greeting and departing from the sisters. Once, one of my sisters told me she could not wait to pray with me, but I thought to myself, are we really praying together with you enclosed between chairs alone and I shoulder to shoulder with the brothers?
Muslim women today remain susceptible to patriarchal purview, while a majority of Muslim men, as anthropologist Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer is quoted, “are incapacitated by patriarchal regimes that establish a singular frame through which they are allowed to imagine and interact with women, children, other men, and themselves.” (p. 107).
A huge problem in contemporary Islam is the dichotomy of traditionalism or rationalism. When it comes to women and moving Islam forward, we have to find a medium between a commitment to reason and literalism to sustain the integrity of Islam, but also promote modern progressive Islam. There are many women who are leading. Kashani is one of them, along with many of the sisters from Believers Bail Out. Religion should not be used to legitimize existing power structures.
Palestinians are suffering immensely while some other Muslims turn a blind eye to their conditions. Some have even exacerbated their ills as they seek refuge from war. Muslims are committing this transgression of turning their backs on their brothers and sisters in Gaza, mainly due to their entanglements with purveyors of imperialism, patriarchy, and capitalism. Chapter Five, “Epistemologies of the Oppressors and the Oppressed,” addresses the aforementioned actions, invoking al-Ghazali’s stark warning: “Do not mix with princes and sultans and avoid sitting with them, for seeing them and sitting with them is great mischief” (p. 206).
Though the example of the co-optation of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, co-founder of Zaytuna Institute and Zaytuna College pained me, I was not surprised. As someone that has gained my understanding of the carceral state from within its clutches, I’m conscious that they operate with an objective to expand and absorb. They literally and figuratively deputize networks of people through forms of endorsement.
In Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s case, he was used as a pawn to pit their version of secular Westernized Islam against what they framed as bad Islam. Yusuf has been incentivized to sell a controlled version of Islam, separate himself from and sell out other Muslims who are oppressed and struggle to maintain a sense of self in conditions not of their own choosing.
In carceral structures I’ve been held in, there is particularly one form of Islam which is accepted by the administration, if there is going to be any at all, which is a co-opted version of al-Islam which can be controlled.
Yusuf is by no means helping the oppressor stop oppressing. His rhetoric alone makes him complicit in the oppression of Muslims and other marginalized people. By shaking hands and working with the colonial government, he’s actually embodying the oppressor. As Shaykh Hamza Yusuf acted as the sole representative of Muslims in the U.S., he bore the responsibility of helping create conditions that led to the death and disenfranchisement of other Muslims whose blood, property, and honor should be sacred to him.
This lends legitimacy to the false notion that proper and respectable behavior will prove Muslims worthy of equal civil and political rights, and that deviance from this norm justifies and causes our unequal treatment. This type of narrative is what creates barriers between different classes, races, and sects of Muslims who should and probably would otherwise have interest in uniting.
In carceral structures I’ve been held in, there is particularly one form of Islam which is accepted by the administration, if there is going to be any at all, which is a co-opted version of al-Islam which can be controlled. So who represents the umma on the inside has to be of their approval as well as who the umma has access to on the outside collectively (and politics are involved).
The Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, and Moorish Americans are not recognized as being part of Islam; they have no services, space for worship, or anything. Some of the brothers, especially those involved with the prison politics, who sit with the administration on behalf of the umma, embody our oppressors as well by not recognizing these brothers and telling less knowledgeable Muslims that they are not Muslims nor should they be a part of our community.
But in the blink of an eye, they invite non-believers to the Jummah who have no intention of becoming Muslim. This causes contention among the umma. Backbiting and infighting take place and divisions are created in a place where unity is a necessity for the survival of all oppressed believers.
When Muslim leadership and middle class Muslims distance or differentiate themselves from what is considered by hegemonic forces as their “lower class brethren” they feed into the West’s notion of exceptionalism. This is used to dismantle anti-racist struggles and foreclose forms of resistance like armed struggle and guerrilla warfare by insurgents which is outside the limits of white supremacist law. Imperialists of the U.S. and those they are aligned with use certain types of Muslims to pathologize resistance and make their crimes against us invisible.
Stokely Carmichael put it best when he said, “The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence.” (Ture, 1971).
Right now, here in prison, after a long fight to receive halal diets which was finally won, Muslims are basically being starved by being served a small portion of beans and two small pancakes or waffles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with no meat. This is outright inhumane while those who receive kosher meals are provided a full meal with the proper amount of calories and different meats from the vendor who provides their meals. What Muslim vendor would send their brothers and sisters in bondage what we are receiving? This is indeed an act of repression and discrimination and has caused many of the brothers to get off halal diets in order to receive the proper nourishment their bodies need.
The way Zaytuna College was created is inspiring and can be used as a model of what collectivism and self-reliance is for Muslim and other marginalized communities. Islamic institutions like this I believe are very important and can help shift society while uplifting the communities where they’re located. Muslim knowledge and practices should be shared; to whom much is given, much is expected.
With backing from Silicon Valley and other entities today, Zaytuna College seems to be firmly rooted and here to stay. From Kashani’s ethnographic introductions, Zaytuna appears to be producing a diverse group of Muslim students who are theo-politically educated, firmly grounded, and community-conscious.
Involvement of corruption and liberalism should be heavily guarded against because when an institution takes on the practices and guiding theories of another, it becomes that institution’s organization.
Though Shaykh Yusuf and I may disagree on some things, he is still my brother. It is very hard for me to make excuses for him but I do forgive him and pray Allah does as well, but questions remain and lessons are learned from his actions. The principles and programs seem sound, but are they still guided in a manner that doesn’t allow corruption in any form? Though Zaytuna is successful, that success must also be measured by their relationship with the community, area residents, and the degree of self-reliance and freedom from counter-revolutionary influences.
If Zaytuna is to be used as a model, we must understand we have the right to build our own educational institutions and systems where young folks will not be indoctrinated to suffer the destructive designs of the U.S. government. The paramount issue should be to maintain the character and integrity of institutions we build while keeping our credibility in the Muslim community and communities our institutions reside in.
Therefore political terms need to be made clear always with strong commitments to oppressed and exploited communities. Involvement of corruption and liberalism should be heavily guarded against because when an institution takes on the practices and guiding theories of another, it becomes that institution’s organization.
Alhamdulillah for sister Maryam. She is indeed a believer of al-Wahhab, The Bestower of Gifts, gifting us all with this publication. Medina By the Bay is a jewel that gives intimate examples of what a Muslim community should, could, and should not be, while also reminding us that we exist in a world shaped by hundreds of years of collective structural harms with legacies of brutal colonization, slavery, and patriarchy that shape the cultures we create, making multiple forms of subordination very present in our relationships.
The text counters this by designing spaces in the mind for intense dreaming found in Islamic radical relational imaginings, the politics of collectivism, mutual respect, and accountability. Kashani takes one’s imagination beyond rational Western ways of knowing that draw from sources we feel, desire, honor, and empathize with, allowing room for creative growth and creative destruction.
For Muslims of all diasporas and classes, this book can be a valuable lesson of what is happening to Muslims within zones of state captivity and also beyond them. I hope this emboldens my brothers and sisters who are physically free and are engaging in progressive, radical, and revolutionary struggle to consider the aforementioned insights in relation to their material conditions, and reach a conclusion.
Jerel Matthews is from the Auburn Gresham neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago. He is a father, young grandfather, brother to many, abolitionist, writer, poet, artist, and Muslim who is currently incarcerated and fighting for his freedom. He earned a BA in Social Science from Northeastern Illinois University and is a proud member of Jamaat Ibad al-Rahman.
As both a Muslim and abolitionist, he comprehends abolition through a theo-political lens as something that should be in constant practice beginning internally and then externally, as is Islam. He is a proponent for social change and works with the non-profit organization Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) to end mass incarceration.
Of his experience of incarceration, Jerel says, “Physical bondage breaks the heart, but for a practicing Muslim it also rebuilds character because there is wisdom in tribulation. Prison makes one become used to suffering and struggling but Allah gives us weapons to adapt to any kind of life. The beneficial and sacred knowledge the Most Merciful has adorned me with allows me to suppress much of the bitterness bondage tends to corrupt others with.”
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