Muslim prisoners’ lawsuits expanded religious rights for all US prisoners.

Evidence

Not all of the federal government’s techniques for controlling the practice of Islam were successful. One of the government’s strategies, for example, was the denial of First Amendment protections to Muslim prisoners. The Justice Department argued that since the NOI was not an authentic religious movement—but rather a “cult” that operated as a political organization—its followers in prison did not have the right to meet or conduct religious services. By redefining Islam as a “cult,” the government could avoid the messiness of legal protections for religious expression. But the repression of Islamic practice in both state and federal prisons ended up expanding rather than limiting the rights of prisoners to practice the religion of their choice. The efforts of incarcerated African American Muslims in US courts helped to establish legal precedents and rights for all prisoners. Generally speaking, these cases guaranteed prisoners the right, with conditions, to assemble for religious services, to read religious literature, to wear religious garb, to consume a special diet, and to communicate with religious leaders. For example, the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in Cooper v. Pate was one of the first significant prisoners’ rights precedents established by the highest court in the land. Thomas Cooper, a member of the NOI sued Illinois prison warden Frank Pate on the grounds that Pate’s prejudice against the NOI had resulted in the denial of Cooper’s right to the free exercise of his religion. Cooper alleged that Pate denied him the right to read religious literature, communicate with NOI ministers, and to attend religious services. The State of Illinois argued that the NOI was a political rather than a religious organization, a position that the Supreme Court rejected. The court ruled for the first time that prisoners had the right, or the legal standing, to seek relief from religious discrimination and required lower courts to hear the law suits of prisoners that were filed on this basis. The 1964 ruling made clear that prisons must treat prisoners equally, regardless of their particular religious affiliation, unless there was a compelling reason not to do so. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 400

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ interest in how legal regulation of marginalized religious practice backfires—repression produced rights. Could also plug into a broader article on how state attempts to control religion breed legal gains.
• SEED: Angle: repression as inadvertent engine of civil rights law—how the state’s attempt to deny NOI religious status forged lasting prisoners’ rights precedents benefiting all faiths.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to all three published pieces as an example of attempted control producing infrastructure (legal) for the controlled group, echoing how sacrifice/sati regulation and dress panics created identity cohesion.