prison islam

The movie South Central was on BET tonight. It's been years since I've seen the whole movie from beginning to end. All I caught was the scene where Ali (the presumably Muslim inmate) defends Bobby (the main character) from being raped by the Aryans.

Ali: We all know Bobby here a man. He a man, so nobody punking nobody here. Am I right, Buddha? Buddha, do you, or do you not recognize this is a man standing here?

The scene also reminded me of a fact which I've mentioned here before. Without any exageration, one of the most humane and sympathetic portrayals of Muslims on tv has been the HBO series Oz, where all the Muslims are inmates in a prison! (And South Central probably comes in second.) Instead of being stereotyped as fanatical single-minded violent terrorists, the prison Muslims which appear on film and tv are often shown as principled (invariably African-American) men striving to live righteously in an overwhelmingly negative environment. Occasionally overzealous, but generally sincere. Even when they are flawed, they still are more Malcolm X than Detroit Red.

I say all of this as a preface to a recent article from alt.muslim:

Rehabilitating Islam's Prison Image by Shahed Amanullah which goes into some of the real-life positive changes which Islam is bringing about in the lives of inmates.