Radical Islamists in Calfornia Prisons
Posted on Sat Aug 20, 2005 at 10:02:24 AM EST
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The LA Times today explores the topic of radical muslim groups in California state prisons:
Federal investigators suspect that an Islamist prison gang, called Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh, or Assembly of Authentic Islam, may have links to three Muslim men recently implicated in a possible plot to attack National Guard Recruitment Centers in California.
....Last month, police in Torrance arrested Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, and Levar Haney Washington, 25, in connection with a string of gas station robberies. Washington converted to Islam in Folsom while serving time for assault and robbery, authorities said. Police staked out the pair and were led to Hammad Riaz Samana. Sources familiar with a federal investigation of the trio say they are suspected of planning to stage a series of terrorist attacks in California.
The vast majority of Muslim inmates are peaceful.
Militant Muslims have been of concern to prison officials since the Nation of Islam, a black separatist group, gained popularity among African American convicts in the 1960s. Those fears, however, were allayed somewhat as prison authorities witnessed the redemptive and mostly peaceful brand of Islam practiced by many Muslim inmates.
During the Attica prison riots in 1971 in New York, for example, Muslim inmates helped keep guards safe from harm. After Warith Deen Muhammad split from the Nation of Islam organization to found his own group, he too made prison ministries a priority, focusing on personal spirituality and rehabilitation.
These two schools of Islam remain the largest in prisons in the United States.
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