A Muslim on The Inside
“Praise the Gods, Martin Luther King is dead.”
Monroe Haynes was an 18-year-old in Vietnam fighting a war he did not understand, with people he did not know, when he heard his commander proclaim this statement. Just barely an adult, Haynes knew only that he was fighting for peace in a foreign land whilst a freedom fighter was martyred back home by the people he was fighting for.
After serving two years in this war, Haynes was honorably discharged and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, categorizing him as a completely disabled veteran according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Finally having returned home, he saw the place he left through a lens warped by trauma: completely different. He received his barbers certification in Compton, California, and began working in a barber shop in an attempt to normalize a stress he could not rid himself of. At one point he was visiting his family in Mississippi and was picked up by the police on minor charges and landed a spot in prison. While serving in the penitentiary in Georgia, Haynes was introduced to a group of Muslims praying together. They followed all different sects of Islam from the Nation to Sunniism to Shia’ism to non-denominational but still gathered to pray together and discuss the core principles of their faith. Haynes learned more about unity in those encounters than he did at any other point in his life.
Every Friday they would congregate for prayer led by a prison chaplain and eventually Haynes decided to attend one. He was moved by the uniformity of Islam, the way individuals who looked just like him found faith so liberating. After that Jummah he began attending more and more, eventually converting while in prison. “The way the faith moved those people was something I wanted. There was a simplicity to the faith, I could open a Quran and understand what it says, the theology people spoke of was not grand and complicated, it was just simple.”
As I sit in the visitation room only a glass window away from Haynes, my brother in Islam, I could not feel more disconnected from the Ummah. Across me sat a man who found Islam in the hardest of circumstances, while being caged in a prison and regarded as sub-human. Yet, his Islam does not waver while the community of Muslims meant to support him is nonexistent. For the first time I saw what it was like to be a Muslim but not part of a bigger Ummah.
Haynes recalled the moment he saw Malcolm X when he was 15 while traveling from Chicago to Mississippi. It was about a year before Malcolm died.
“I remember seeing Malcolm and nothing made sense to me when I was 15, just broad phrases about unifying the black community and fighting the oppressors. It was only when I converted to Islam in 94 that I thought back to that moment and realized the true liberation that came from Islam,” Haynes said.
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I stumbled upon Haynes while researching incarcerated Muslims in Champaign County jail, and his trauma could not be more visible upon meeting him. Haynes, now a 69-year-old man waiting for a trial that has been delayed for two years, is sitting in a jail full of 20 and 30-year-old’s. The right to a “quick and speedy trial” has not been much of a right for Haynes. Prior to being incarcerated, Haynes was diagnosed with diabetic neuropathy which usually requires that individuals wear specific kinds of shoes and take medication to ease nerve pain. Haynes was prescribed Gabapentin, a nerve-pain medication, and was using it prior to being in jail, however once he was arrested the jail stopped his medication and had to wait a few months to receive clearance to give it to him again. While painfully waiting for his medication and becoming increasingly handicapped, Haynes could only turn to his faith again and again. His lawyer was able to get him therapeutic neuropathy shoes and after a while they prescribed him a lower dosage of gabapentin.
In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center with 50 prison chaplains in 2012, the center found that 51% of chaplains saw Islam as the fastest growing religion in prisons; those same chaplains noted that these Muslim inmates are also among the most underserved of incarcerated people. The population of incarcerated Muslims so large that one would think issues related to mass incarceration would be Muslim issues. However, the marginalization of incarcerated individuals seems to be an issue separate from faith to most Muslims. While a second-generation Muslim living in the U.S. has the same faith as an incarcerated Muslim, their experiences are immensely different and a bridge between these two communities is rarely ever made. This is why it is so essential to understand that Monroe’s story is one of many, highlighting how the system of mass incarceration targets certain communities of Americans, and Muslim Americans, more than others. The experiences of African Americans and the experiences of mainstream immigrant Muslims are not mutually exclusive and should not be the reason why one community is separated from the other, especially when there is so much overlap. The issue of mass incarceration in America is a Muslim issue because it is the modern reiteration of the enslavement of people, and yet another means of perpetuating injustice. Seeing the humanity in Monroe, and in so many incarcerated individuals, is the first step to bridging the gap between these various parts of the community, and is the only way to finally ensure that Islam truly does bring the peace it promises.
