Civitas Blog

It is a known fact that several noted Islamist terrorists, including shoe-bomber Richard Reid, were converted to Islam whilst in prison. As one-time prison-doctor Theodore Dalrymple has explained, radical versions of Islam provide converts to Islam in prison with badly-needed ‘boundaries’ that yet allow them to retain or acquire a sense of ‘victim-hood’ that enables them to feel more sinned against than sinners, and hence that fuels a sense of anger that can all too easily lead to future acts of violence.

In attracting such prison converts to radical Islam, Muslim literature in English has been known to play a part. This includes Wahhabi-funded and propagated English-language translations of the Koran to which certain incendiary interpolations have been added. According to testimony given last September to the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by a one-time American convert to Islam, who has since renounced Islam for Christianity, Saudi ‘charities’ for which he worked have able in the past to distribute to US prisoners Wahhabi/Salafi English translations of the Koran which contain explanatory footnotes that propagate the most incendiary versions of that religion.

For example, when he worked for a now deceased Saudi organisation called Al Hamramain, it distributed to prisons an English translation of the Koran that contained the following explanatory footnote about the meaning of ‘jihad’:

‘Al-Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah's Cause (with full force of numbers and weaponry) is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars (on which it stands). By Jihad Islam is established, Allah's Word is made superior, . . . and His Religion (Islam) is propagated. By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and the Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim, and he who tries to escape from this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfill this duty, dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrite.’

Also included in this Wahhabi English-language edition of the Koran was a 22-page appendix by a former Saudi Arabian chief justice, entitled ‘The Call to Jihad’, that contained such statements as:

‘Allah . . . commanded the Muslims to fight against all the Mushrikun [ -- i.e. non-Muslims who are neither Jews nor Christians] as well as against the people of the Scriptures [Jews and Christians] if they do not embrace Islam, till they pay the Jizyah (a tax levied on the non-Muslims who do not embrace Islam and are under the protection of an Islamic government) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.’

According to its former employee, Al Hamramain was able to get this inflammatory literature into US prisons without its being subjected to ‘a significant degree of scrutiny’.

Perhaps, even more disturbing than that was his revelation that the organisation kept a data-base with particulars of the more than 15,000 inmates with whom it had had dealings while they were in prison which included details of their release-dates and the addresses to which they planned to return upon release.

Jonathan Aiken has written how Muslim prisoners tried to convert him to Islam while he was inside and how normal such proselytising there is.

More disturbing than this are reports about how the notorious gang of prisoners in Belmarsh jail known as the Muslim Boys use intimidation to make converts of fellow prisoners. As the Daily Mirror reported in January 2006 in an exclusive news story entitled ‘The Jail Run By Al-Qaeda’:

‘Violent Islamic extremists are terrorising inmates at Britain's toughest jail with an iron fist as they trawl for al-Qaeda recruits. The gang of thugs - known as The Muslim Boys - intimidate frightened inmates at Belmarsh [prison] into joining their faith, beating those who refuse their bullying demands. Some bloodied victims have been slashed by razor blades attached to toothbrushes. Others have had boiling water hurled over them. Prisoners say they are in fear for their lives. The brutal brotherhood - whose gang on the outside is the Yard's Public Enemy No 1 - also host weekly "religious" meetings where it is feared members are groomed for terrorism by al-Qaeda chiefs. Watching guards are helpless to take action as they do not understand what is being said. Some have been attacked at the "services".’

One can only sympathise with those poor prison officers whose daily task it is to keep the likes of these in order. But, sadly, prison officers are suffering an enormous collapse in morale as their pay levels have fallen relatively speaking, especially over the last ten years. This has left them vulnerable to corruption as well as demoralised, as revealed in a report into the Prison Service, resulting from an enquiry by the Metropolitan Police leaked to the BBC last July which claimed that more than a thousand prison officers were believed to be involved in corruption.

At the time of the leak, Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, was quoted as having said when interviewed about the leaked report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme:

‘If the Prison Service has sat on this report, or was aware in any way that there is corruption to this extent and inappropriate relationships to this extent, I find it absolutely unforgivable that they have done nothing about it and certainly haven’t discussed it with us.’

Mr Caton then added:

‘I joined the Prison Services in 1977. It was then a stricter vetting process, a lot stricter interview process to get into the Prison Service than the police, for obvious reasons…. What we need to do is get back to a culture where prison officers feel respected for themselves, where they are respected by those who profess to run the Prison Service and where politicians recognise the very difficult and dangerous job we do and pay us appropriately and get rid of people who are corrupt or having inappropriate relationships’.

If the government is really serious in its resolve to tackle the growing problem of home-grown terrorism, rather than all those massively over-paid diversity training posts in the public sector, and the 2012 Olympics even, it would help if it could award salary levels to prison officers that matched the level of their responsibility and the arduousness of their task.

Otherwise, while they might not be recruited into the ranks of Al-Qaeda, all too many screws will remain vulnerable for easy turning, and, as a result, however much the security services may vet Muslim prison chaplains and the literature they bring with them, all too many prisoners will be left vulnerable for a different kind of turning too.