In 2023, Muslim Advocates created Keeping the Faith, an interactive national database of prison policies for common Islamic religious practices. We created this tool by obtaining, often through open records requests, data relating to religious practice in state prisons across the country. Keeping the Faith is a valuable tool for policymakers, journalists, and advocates who fight for the dignity and liberty of incarcerated people.
We created this tool because state power is often unchecked in the carceral setting, and communities that endure systemic oppression outside of prison walls, including Muslims, are especially vulnerable inside prisons and jails. But from early, landmark cases in the 1960s to today, imprisoned Muslims have also fought for justice, accountability, and the rule of law—advocating not only for their own rights but also for those of all people enduring incarceration. Some of those victories we still rely on today. Keeping the Faith is both an advocacy tool to facilitate challenges to particular denials of religious accommodation and a celebration of the achievements of those jailhouse advocates who kept, and fought for, their faith.
Just last Ramadan, Muslim Advocates and Stanford Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic sent joint letters to all 50 state departments of corrections, informing them of the religious accommodations they are legally required to provide to Muslims in their custody at a time of heightened observance and sensitivity for Muslim people on the inside.
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