Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures, infographics, images and tables
- List of abbreviations
- About the authors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction: A tale of three prisoners
- 1 Where does Islam come from and who are Muslim prisoners?
- 2 What is Islam in prison?
- 3 Finding their faith: why do prisoners choose Islam?
- 4 What types of Islam do prisoners follow?
- 5 Mainstream Islam in prison
- 6 Islamism and Islamist Extremism in prison
- 7 The lives of Muslim prisoners: opportunities and risks
- 8 Caring for Muslim prisoners: Muslim prison chaplaincy
- 9 Managing Muslim prisoners: treading a middle path between naïvety and suspicion
- Conclusion: The Virtuous Cycle of Rehabilitation and Avoiding the Vicious Cycle of Extremism
- Appendix 1 Theoretical framework
- Appendix 2 Methodology
- Appendix 3 Ethics, recruitment, data analysis and data management
- Appendix 4 Descriptions of our research prisons
- Appendix 5 How UCIP ascertained the Worldviews of Muslim prisoners
- Glossary of key terms and important names
- References
- Index
4 - What types of Islam do prisoners follow?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures, infographics, images and tables
- List of abbreviations
- About the authors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction: A tale of three prisoners
- 1 Where does Islam come from and who are Muslim prisoners?
- 2 What is Islam in prison?
- 3 Finding their faith: why do prisoners choose Islam?
- 4 What types of Islam do prisoners follow?
- 5 Mainstream Islam in prison
- 6 Islamism and Islamist Extremism in prison
- 7 The lives of Muslim prisoners: opportunities and risks
- 8 Caring for Muslim prisoners: Muslim prison chaplaincy
- 9 Managing Muslim prisoners: treading a middle path between naïvety and suspicion
- Conclusion: The Virtuous Cycle of Rehabilitation and Avoiding the Vicious Cycle of Extremism
- Appendix 1 Theoretical framework
- Appendix 2 Methodology
- Appendix 3 Ethics, recruitment, data analysis and data management
- Appendix 4 Descriptions of our research prisons
- Appendix 5 How UCIP ascertained the Worldviews of Muslim prisoners
- Glossary of key terms and important names
- References
- Index
Summary
The Worldviews of Muslim prisoners: Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism
In the previous chapters, we have described the history of Islam and of Muslims in prison, the ‘spiritual architecture’ of Islam in prison, the basic types of Muslim prisoner and the reasons why prisoners choose Islam. In this chapter, we offer the reader an overview of the types of Islamic Worldview that Muslim prisoners hold and how these types of Worldviews affect their lives in prison.
A ‘Worldview’ approach
From here on, we will describe different forms of Islam as different ‘Worldviews’. ‘Worldviews’ have been defined as ‘unified ways-of-being in the world, together with ways-of-knowing the world in which knowledge and action are knit-up together and organized into a single view of life’ (Orr, 2001: 6). In other words, by Worldview we mean ‘walking-the-talk’ and ‘talking-the-walk’, which we all do to varying degrees of consistency in order to form a coherent idea of who we are in relation to the rest of the world.
As well as this idea of individual Worldviews as an integrated way of understanding and acting consistently in the world, a second key aspect of Worldviews is that they are often shared both consciously and unconsciously by collectives, such as families and nations (McCarthy, 1978), and also by deviant and criminal ‘in-groups’, such as criminal gangs, and terrorist organisations and states.
The idea of a Worldview is also useful to us in this context because it corresponds with the Islamic idea of religion as a deen, which means an integrated combination of belief in God together with related actions and outcomes in the world.
Mapping the Worldviews of Muslim prisoners
The Worldviews of prisoners in numbers
Using variables and methods detailed in Appendix 5 across the whole sample, we identified that those prisoners whose Worldview was characterised as ‘Mainstream’ were significantly in the majority at 76 per cent, with those categorised as ‘Islamist Extremist’ representing only 4 per cent of our characteristic sample.
The breakdown was as follows:
• 48 per cent6 (n = 133) were characterised as Mainstream, Traditional;
• 28 per cent (n = 79) were characterised as Mainstream, Activist;
• 19 per cent (n = 54) were characterised as Islamist;
• 4 per cent (n = 11) were characterised as Islamist Extremist, Non-violent;
• 0.4 per cent (n = 1) was characterised as Islamist Extremist, Violent.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Islam in PrisonFinding Faith, Freedom and Fraternity, pp. 108 - 117Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2022