Vetting
Muslim Prison Chaplains a Global Problem
by Patrick Dunleavy
IPT News
February 19, 2019
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 Preventing or even
minimizing prison radicalization is always a challenge. It's more
difficult, however, when we continually fail to vet the chaplains who
minister to inmates.
Germany appears to have learned this lesson recently. Authorities there
recently discovered that over 85 percent of their Muslim prison chaplains
were actually agents of the Turkish government, the Gatestone Institute reports. Those clerics had to be
terminated after the Turkish government refused to have them go through
security checks, which are required
by German law for all prison chaplains. And while the number of
foreign-born inmates in German prisons has spiked to nearly 50 percent, the
vast majority of those are from Poland, Tunisia, the Czech Republic, and
Georgia, not Turkey.
One wonders why the need for the 97 Turkish prison chaplains who were
let go.
Germany now has 25 Muslim chaplains. This reduction comes in the light
of the increased number of Muslim inmates in their system and the fears of
the increased threat of radicalization.
The Muslim chaplains are represented by the Turkish Islamic Union, or
DİTİB, which has been under investigation by Germany's Domestic
Intelligence agency after it found a connection between Turkish military
action in Syria and a rise in persecution of Turkish dissidents. It was
also discovered that some DİTİB chaplains were providing names of dissidents to their embassy in
Germany.
This is not the type of religious figure you want ministering to a
captive audience vulnerable to radicalization.
Authorities both here and in the European Union have known for years the
powerful influence a prison chaplain can have on an incarcerated
individual.
The right chaplain can help the inmate on the path to rehabilitation and
restoration of family ties. The wrong one can be like a wolf in sheep's
clothing filling the inmate's mind with a radical ideology that pushes him
or her down the road to jihad. Only a thorough vetting of religious clergy
and volunteers can reduce that threat.
When I testified before Congress in 2011 on the threat of prison
radicalization, I was asked by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, if
there was any difference between Islamic radicalization in prison and other
types of radicalization such as Christian militants in prison. My answer
was succinct, "Foreign country backing and foreign country
financing."
While investigating radical Islamic influences in prison, we found
several indicators that contributed to the radicalization process. One was
foreign born inmates who had already committed terrorist acts. Improperly
vetted clergy also play a role, along with foreign funds that came to
organizations like the North American Islamic Trust Fund, the Islamic Society
of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia and
the Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences (GSISS).
The GSISS was founded by Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, an Egyptian cleric who worked closely with Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative
Sami Al-Arian and helped finance Al-Arian's think tank. Al-Alwani was
also investigated for his involvement with the SAAR Foundation, a
Saudi-funded organization, based in Herndon, Va., that was suspected
of funneling money to terrorist organizations.
Some of that money from these foreign sources were used to pay for
overseas travel for Muslim prison chaplains and also literature for the
prison libraries that promoted a Salafist/Wahhabi view of Islam.
In 2014, the Federal Bureau of Prisons hired an Egyptian born cleric,
Fouad El Bayly, to be a prison chaplain. As president of the Islamic Center
in Johnstown, Penn., he publicly called for the death of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former
Muslim, activist, and writer who was a vocal critic of Islam's subjugation
of women. Ali "...has defamed the faith," Bayly said. "...
and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death."
That revelation prompted U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to request a list of organizations that the Bureau of
Prisons (BOP) was using to assist in its background checks of potential
religious workers. Grassley was outraged to find ISNA on that list. ISNA's
history of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood has been well documented by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
With blatant incredulity CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper came to ISNA's
defense, accusing Grassley of Islamophobia.
"This is an extremely old issue that has been circulated endlessly
on anti-Muslim hate sites and it's a bit surprising to see an elected
official promoting these kinds of Islamophobic smears," Hooper told FoxNews.com. "(ISNA) is a well-respected
Muslim organization that for decades has made positive contributions to our
nation, and like any Muslim-American organization they are frequently
targeted by scurrilous attacks whose only goal seems to be to demonize and
marginalize American Muslims."
In fact, it was federal prosecutors and documented evidence which
connected ISNA to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas financing. Prosecutors included ISNA among groups and people "who are
and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood" during the
Hamas-financing trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development and five former officials. Bank records admitted into evidence
show that ISNA served as a conduit for Holy Land Foundation contributions.
Some checks that passed through ISNA accounts were made payable to
"the Palestinian Mujahadeen," the original name for the Hamas
military wing, prosecutors said.
New York's Majlis
Ash-Shura also was on the BOP list. It includes the Islamic Circle of
North America (ICNA), an organization with direct ties with Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani-based
terrorist group.
ICNA's goals include the establishment of a caliphate, or global Islamic
state, its 2010 member handbook said.
ICNA has published literature that describe jihad as a form of worship.
"Groups like ICNA do not promote Islam, but rather Islamism, the
linking of politics and religion," said Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic
Forum for Democracy.
This appears to be what the Turkish prison chaplains were trying to do
in German prisons through DİTİB.
Organizations with this type of ideology should not be relied upon to
certify potential prison chaplains. It only risks promoting radicalization
among the inmates and destabilizing the already fragile prison environment.
IPT Senior Fellow Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector
General for New York State Department of Corrections and author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad. He currently
teaches a class on terrorism for the United States Military Special
Operations School.
Related Topics: Patrick
Dunleavy, prison
radicalization, chaplains,
Turkish
Islamic Union, ISNA,
NAIT,
Graduate
School of Islamic Social Sciences, Taha
Jabir Al-Awani, Fouad
El Bayly, Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, Charles
Grassley, Ibrahim
Hooper, Majlus
Ash-Shura, ICNA,
Jamaat-e-Islami
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