Convenience Conversions and an Inconvenient Truth

by Hugh Fitzgerald (June 2016)

Bathhurst Prison New South Wales

Prisoners at Kariong Prison in New South Wales (Australia) have recently complained that they have been threatened by Muslim inmates with violence unless they convert to Islam. The same threats have been reported from at least two other prisons in Australia, and from Great Britain, France, and other European countries with Muslim populations greater than 2-3%. Muslims now constitute a significant percentage of the prison population in Europe, much higher than their percentage in the general population (and both percentages are growing rapidly). For example, Muslims are at present 5% of the British population, 15% of the prison population, and 44% of those in maximum security prisons. In France, they are 8% of the population, and 70% of the prison population. In Germany, they are 6.5% of the population and over 30% of the prison population.

“Steve McMahon, chairman of Public Service Association Corrections branch [in Sydney], said the forced conversions are likely ‘extremist-related’ [but] ‘these people are clearly doing it for some reasons other than their devotion to the faith and it is concerning in light of how dangerous some of these individuals have become,’ he told The Daily Telegraph, adding that Muslims in prison are ‘not upstanding citizens’ who don’t believe in violence.”

Of course, some of the Australian prison authorities might be laboring under the impression that the prisoners who are converting are doing so of their own free will, and that they have no business interfering in an inmate’s choice of religion. Their reluctance to act decisively could also be a defeatist admission of fear: we don’t dare antagonize Muslim prisoners — who “are not upstanding citizens who don’t believe in violence” — by attempting to prevent their campaigns of conversion. Besides, the most immediate worry for the West in prisons is not that of forced conversion to Islam, but the “radicalization of those who are already Muslims,” especially effective in prisons, where young inmates are ‘in awe of convicted terrorists’” (from the 2012 report on Islamisation in prisons by the Cambridge criminologist Alison Liebling).

The same problem of “convenience conversions” has long plagued prisons in Britain.

Here is the story of one holdout:

One young woman whose brother is serving a lengthy sentence in a top security prison in England told how he was being bullied by members of a Muslim gang who were trying to force him to convert to Islam.

“He just looks like a broken man,” she said, again asking not to be identified. “He’s tearful on visits, and I’m just really scared for him. He’s been physically assaulted. He’s had black eyes. In the showers, he got threatened with a knife.

“He’s not going to back down. He’s not going to convert for anyone. He just spends his time hiding in his cell. He’s got at least another five years to serve. I don’t know how much longer he can hold out.”

And another describes the protection offered, against both Muslims and non-Muslims:

Another serving prisoner told the Mail: “Some people really struggle when they come in to prison. They will try to find some support — and the Muslim groups offer that. A lot of black men in their early 20s who are in on violence or drug charges are targeted.

“They would maybe have been part of gangs for a long time. But in prison, they’re on their own. I’ve seen guys who’ve been beaten up or bullied, had their fags nicked and their cells turned over, that sort of thing, and then they’ll be befriended by some of the Muslims.

“Then the guy will put in a formal request saying that he wants to change his religion. He might have a meeting with the governor and he goes through the process of becoming a Muslim. Everyone knows why they are doing it — it’s not as if they have suddenly found God.”

But one British prison official said: “These gangs use their faith as a cover for violence and intimidation, threatening non-Muslims and pressuring them to convert to Islam.”

Again, here we have officials refusing to take Islam seriously as the explanation for Muslim behavior: “These gangs use their faith as a cover for violence and intimidation.” Rather, it’s the opposite: their faith is not a mere “cover,” i.e., excuse, but the reason for the violence and intimidation [of non-Muslims]. The refusal to recognize the nature of Islam keeps getting in the way of satisfactory analysis.

But aren’t Muslims embarrassed by this use of threats to gain prison converts? Not at all. No prominent Muslims have spoken out against this. From their point of view, since it is only through Islam that men learn and practice righteousness, bringing them to Islam is the greatest benefit that can be lavished upon them. Why should they care what instrument is employed to attain that worthy end? These prison conversions are now a permanent problem for the West’s security services, with no solution or amelioration in sight. And since most of these prisoners are already schooled in violence, they are likely to be more susceptible to recruitment as future Jihadis. And the matter gets nothing like the attention it deserves from the security services.

Just imagine, by contrast, what the reaction of practically all right-thinking people would be to reports that Christian prisoners were making systematic attempts to convert Muslim prisoners through the threat of violence. From sea to shining sea there would be a storm of nonstop outrage on the airwaves and the Internet that nothing could assuage, with Christian clergymen in the lead. But that hypothetical, of course, is absurd. There have been no reports, in or out of prison, of Christians threatening Muslims with violence unless they convert to Christianity.

This leaves prison authorities in the U.S., as elsewhere in the West, with an ever-growing security threat of converts to Islam from among the most dangerous segments of society, and with the only measure likely to be effective in preventing convenience conversions — that is, segregation according to faith — impossible to undertake. That’s the inconvenient truth. And Muslims, who watch as their numbers increase from yet one more variety of “adult-onset Islam,” will have had the last laugh, the one provided them by Qur’an 2:256: “There shall be no compulsion in religion.”

First published in Jihad Watch.

 

______________________________________________

To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish interesting, timely and thought provoking articles such as this one, please click here.

Hugh Fitzgerald contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all his contributions, on which comments are welcome.