Posted on 12/30/2001 10:06:48 AM PST by Clive
The man who tried to blow up the aircraft from Paris to Miami by igniting Semtex hidden in his shoe was a British criminal called Richard Reid. Concealment in the soles and heels of shoes is a common way of smuggling drugs and even weapons into prison, so it is possible Reid learned part of his technique in a house of correction. Certainly he converted to Islam there.
Religious conversion in prison is not at all uncommon. Many of the young men in British prisons (and crime, it should always be remembered, is a young man's game) emerge from profoundly unstable backgrounds: a loveless broken home, in which the only other significant influence is the witless nihilism of modern popular culture. Eventually, after several prison sentences, the penny drops that something is missing from their lives, and they are then susceptible to evangelism of all kinds. They need a doctrine that provides all the answers at once.
Islam is not the only religion that makes converts in prison. I have noticed a sub-group of prisoners, for example, who turn to Buddhism while incarcerated. They can almost always be recognized physically: they sport pony tails and have an air of unnatural and studied calm. The pony-tailed Buddhist has usually committed the most terrible and violent offences in his past: and from an utter disregard for human life, he suddenly becomes solicitous even about the life of insects.
I am not sure how long the Buddhist influence lasts after release from prison: for most of the prison Buddhists I have known are serving long sentences. But I suspect that gestalt switches are inherently unstable, and instantaneous changes in one direction can all too easily be reversed.
Evangelical Christians also reap a small harvest in prison. Again, I am uncertain about the depth or duration of the change for the better that conversion produces: and my skepticism increased when I met a pastor of an evangelical church -- imprisoned for having administered sleeping pills to female members of his flock at coffee mornings before taking sexual advantage of them -- who claimed to have realized the error of his ways by further study of the Gospels. He was persuasive, plausible and charming, but presumably he had been persuasive, plausible and charming in the first place: and contact with such a case destroys confidence that one easily can distinguish between a true and a false change of heart.
In the prison where I work, however, by far the most active evangelism is that carried out by the Muslims.
One cannot walk through the jail in which I work without noticing books and pamphlets expounding the principles and precepts of Islam that are left lying about on tables and chairs. They outnumber Christian literature by a factor of 10 or 20 to one, if not more.
A visitor would think Britain was an Islamic country.
There are, of course, a lot of Muslims in British jails. Young men of Pakistani origin look set to overtake those of Jamaican origin in the over-representation-in-prison stakes (by contrast, the Sikhs and Hindus are under-represented, thus refuting police and judicial racial prejudice as the explanation of the phenomenon). But the presence of so many Muslims does not explain the comparative success of Islam in making converts among whites and blacks, for the young Muslim criminals are neither admired nor liked by other groups. The explanation lies elsewhere.
Most of the criminals I meet in prison are convinced that they are themselves the victims of injustice: not in the particular sense of having been falsely accused (the majority will admit to me that they have done what they were accused of doing, and generally very much more besides), but in a global, existential sense. Unable or unwilling to distinguish between the unfairness of human life and the injustice of society, they bear a grudge against a hated society that they believe has deliberately and maliciously loaded the dice against them. The only society they know, of course, is the one they live in: They are too ignorant and ill- educated to compare it with any other, either in geography or history. They thus have no standards of comparison by which to judge and put into perspective the alleged wrongs done to them by the society they hate.
In the circumstances, conversion to Islam kills two birds with one stone. It fulfils a personal need, but it is also an act of revenge upon society: for official multiculturalism notwithstanding, everyone knows that Western societies are profoundly uneasy about their infiltration by an increasingly confident and militant Islam that uses Western liberal principles to spread itself in the way communism once did.
Conversion to Islam is thus the prisoner's expression of Malvolio's last sentiment in Twelfth Night, after he has been so thoroughly humiliated: "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you." And it is salutary always to remember that in most people the thirst for revenge is much stronger than the quest for truth.
Theodore Dalrymple is a British physician and contributing editor to City Journal.
Contrast, for example, the Christian religion, which starts with the idea of individual abasement, recognition of sin and unworthiness, and a begging for forgiveness. Chuck Colson, formerly of Watergate fame, founded his Prison Ministries and I believe has had good success in preventing recidivism among those who join. (Incidentally, I am not a religious person).
Do you mean like "true communism?"
With your Canadian immigration policies, perhaps it's time for you to get manifested, too. Before it's too late, if you get my drift.
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