NEW YORK — The arrest of four Muslim ex-convicts in an alleged terrorism plot in the Bronx is renewing fears about the spread of Islamic extremism in the nation’s prisons.
At least two of the four men suspected of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military airplanes converted to Islam behind bars. The alleged mastermind also is a convert, and the fourth man identified himself as a Muslim when he entered prison.
Islam has had a strong presence in U.S. prisons for decades, and many chaplains and corrections officials credit the faith, when taught properly, with being a stabilizing force that can help inmates turn their lives around.
But this week’s foiled plot is not the first terrorism scheme implicating Muslim convicts, and it comes despite reports of progress in screening chaplains and materials on Islam in the prison system.
“Basically, the threat is real,” said Paul Rogers, past president of the American Correctional Chaplains Association. “Prisons have unstable people and people who are on the edge of a lot of different things. The radical elements of any religion can be emphasized.”
Those fears were heightened this week as lawmakers debated the fate of detainees if President Barack Obama shutters the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Mitch Silber, a top New York Police Department intelligence analyst, said inmates converting to Islam are so common that he and his colleagues call it “Prislam.”
Several imams used the term “Jailhouse Islam” to describe a form of Islam in prison that incorporates gang loyalty and violence, the report said.
Though many drop the faith once they are out, for some “the conversion sticks” and can fuel anger toward the United States, said Silber, co-author of the 2007 NYPD report “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.”
Many states are doing a better job of screening the reading material that comes into prisons, Rogers said. But other problems arise when there are no qualified chaplains or volunteers.
“Sometimes inmates rely on other inmates, and it’s sort of the prison way,” Rogers said. “They turn to someone they trust, their ‘celly’ or someone in their cellblock, and put them on a pedestal as someone who has more knowledge about the religion. He could be spreading knowledge or could be spreading ignorance.”
Islam took hold in U.S. prisons in the 1940s, when members of the Nation of Islam were held for refusing to fight in World War II.
