This essay was printed in partnership with the Prison Journalism Project, which publishes unbiased journalism by jailed writers and others affected by imprisonment.
On February 8, 2022, about an hour earlier than the 6.30am morning depend, an announcement rang out over the loudspeakers at New Jersey State Jail (NJSP). It was an emergency code, a “Code 53,” indicating a medical state of affairs.
Positioned in Trenton, NJSP is the state’s solely most safety jail for males. Most are serving lengthy sentences, many for all times. Earlier than New Jersey abolished capital punishment in 2007, NJSP was house to the state’s loss of life row, therefore its nickname, “The Last Stop”. The jail immediately consists of three giant compounds — West, North and South — and homes about 1,300 prisoners. Roughly 400 are Muslim. Apart from just a few dozen, the bulk are converts.
It was chilly that morning when the announcement rang by means of the PA system in 2-Proper, certainly one of 9 housing models within the West Compound, a Civil Struggle-era navy advanced later transformed to serve its present goal.
I had simply gotten as much as clear the ground of my South Compound cell — a single-person, 8 by 7-foot (2.4 by 2.1-metre) cage — earlier than performing morning prayers. A protracted metallic desk runs throughout the size of 1 wall of my cell; adjoined to it are a chrome steel sink and bathroom. The sunshine gray partitions are naked apart from an Islamic prayer calendar, a timetable that I observe daily.
I work for the jail’s chaplaincy division and know that of the practically 120 males who reside on 2-Proper, greater than two dozen of them are from our Islamic congregation, which is among the many largest within the US jail system.
I instantly started to hope. Through the years, I developed a behavior of praying every time emergency codes had been known as out. They’d grow to be frequent in these days. The COVID-19 pandemic was nonetheless raging, significantly in prisons the place the virus has killed thousands of people. Due to the heightened ambiance of worry of loss of life through the pandemic, many Muslims at NJSP had begun to really feel intense anxiousness about our remaining rites, and what would occur to our our bodies if we died. Fuelling this unease was the data that some imprisoned males who died at NJSP had been cremated in opposition to their spiritual beliefs.
Shedding a brother
I had already misplaced one pal to the virus, so each time I heard a medical code, I braced for dangerous information.
This time was no totally different.
“Yo, Tariq, it was Mujahid on the code this morning,” shouted one of many longtime prisoners from my housing unit who labored on the within sanitation element as he returned from a garbage run.
Affirmation of the information got here from one other prisoner, a fellow Muslim who labored on the ice element hauling and filling luggage of ice for styrofoam coolers, which prisoners should purchase and use to refrigerate meals and drinks. Our brother, Gregory Williams, who glided by the identify Mujahid after changing to Islam, had died.
I first met Mujahid at concerning the time of my arrival at NJSP in August 2005, three years after I used to be arrested. I used to be 28 years outdated after I arrived, and had recognized him for the higher a part of 20 years. Mujahid had been in jail for greater than 40 years. He was an lively, beloved senior member of our Muslim jail congregation. He was one of many establishment’s oldest paralegals, or what some name a “jailhouse lawyer”, an imprisoned particular person, normally self-taught, who helps fellow prisoners in numerous authorized issues. He was a wholesome, lively, slender Black man recognized for each his authorized work and handball recreation. He was 67 when he died.
I realized the main points of what occurred later that morning within the North Compound Chapel from Martin “Poncho” Robles and Samuel who lived in Mujahid’s housing unit. The chapel serves prisoners of all religions and I work there as a clerk, helping with spiritual companies, which incorporates placing collectively a month-to-month roster of various actions and offering prisoners with studying materials, amongst different duties.
The chapel is situated on the junction of the North and the West compounds, and alongside a hall resulting in the jail gymnasium and the recreation yard. In consequence, it’s a high-traffic space, and folks typically cease by the chapel to alternate or focus on information. A loss of life inside NJSP is huge information, and due to the continued unfold of COVID-19, the jail was seemingly all the time abuzz with dialog about somebody getting sick, being hospitalised or dying.
When Poncho and Samuel, who requested that solely his first identify be used on this article, got here by, I used to be sitting with Sheikh Jamal El-Chebli, supervisor of NJSP’s chaplaincy division and an worker of the New Jersey Division of Corrections (NJDOC), the federal government company chargeable for the state jail system. Additionally current was Robert “Rafique” Rose, my fellow chaplaincy clerk and shut pal. Rose, a founding member of our congregation, is a well-respected septuagenarian elder and recognized inside as “Sheikh Rafique”. (The time period “sheikh” is an Arabic honorific that can be utilized to discuss with elders.) Tall and full of life, he has served greater than 40 years of a 75-year jail sentence.
Issues turned rapidly
The day earlier than Mujahid handed away, Poncho and Samuel instructed us he had been having problem respiratory. One in every of his legs, the 2 reported, had swollen up the day prior to this, prompting a go to to the jail medical division. Later, Mujahid relayed to Poncho and Samuel that he had felt dismissed by the medical personnel and never taken severely.
The subsequent morning, at roughly 5:10am, a guard carried out a daily prisoner depend. Poncho, whose cell was situated near Mujahid’s, heard him acknowledge the guard.
However then issues rapidly turned. At 5:32am, Poncho stated, the nurse delivering morning drugs to prisoners within the housing unit discovered Mujahid unresponsive. The officer escorting the nurse instantly known as for the medical code. Quickly, medical workers arrived and pulled Mujahid’s physique out of his cell, making an attempt to resuscitate him for what Poncho known as “a good half hour”.
“You could see his lifeless body on the cold floor,” Poncho stated. Some males within the unit grew agitated – some had been murmuring whereas others yelled angrily. Unable to revive Mujahid, jail officers waited for the coroners to reach. Poncho stated he tried at hand the officers a sheet to cowl his physique however they didn’t take it. In my expertise, jail workers are sometimes reluctant to the touch a physique for worry of changing into entangled within the investigation that follows a loss of life. Ultimately, the guards introduced a standing display screen to protect him from view.
His physique lay there for about seven hours earlier than the coroner lastly pronounced Mujahid lifeless, Poncho defined. At that time, Mujahid’s “body was placed in a black body bag and dragged away.” (I’ve not been capable of verify the official reason for loss of life.)
The information of Mujahid’s loss of life hit these of us who knew him exhausting. Poncho stated he’s been “messed up” ever since he noticed his pal’s lifeless physique mendacity unattended for thus lengthy.
Upon studying what had occurred, Sheikh El-Chebli, Sheikh Rafique and I checked out one different and recited a verse from the Quran typically invoked in instances of calamity or loss of life: Inna l’illah wa inna ilayhi rajioun. (Actually, to God we belong and really to Him we return.)
After they left, we talked about Mujahid, his service to the neighborhood and his beneficiant nature. In jail, such moments are cherished. They briefly ease the stifling feeling of imprisonment and isolation which burdens us all. In shared grief, we really feel held by our neighborhood and jail household.
However we quickly began to fret about Mujahid’s burial and remaining rites. It was a surreal dialog; over time, we had typically spoken with Mujahid concerning the topic. Mujahid had all the time tried to make use of his authorized experience to enhance the standard of life for our congregation, and specifically, had labored to safe remaining rites for imprisoned Muslims.
Now, it appeared, his worst fears – not receiving these rites – may come to go.
Burial and remaining rites
Islamic beliefs dictate {that a} Muslim can’t be cremated; it’s thought of haram, a forbidden act. A Muslim have to be buried after a ritual bathtub known as ghusl and the overlaying of the physique with two white sheets or towels, often called kafan. A janazah, or funeral, is carried out earlier than burial.
For Muslims, the final rites are a remaining farewell and non secular act carried out in line with sincerely held beliefs in life after loss of life, the day of judgement and heaven and hell. The burial procedures are subsequently of important spiritual significance.
Throughout my imprisonment, I’ve recognized of Muslim prisoners who’ve died and not using a household keen or capable of declare their our bodies. In some circumstances, these males had been buried with the assistance of Islamic communities outdoors, together with the Islamic Society of Central Jersey (ISCJ).
However at current, there doesn’t look like a transparent prison-facilitated course of in place for prisoners to affect what occurs to their our bodies after they die.
The truth that so many Muslims inside are converts complicates issues. Arranging remaining rites and legally establishing one’s burial preferences sometimes require buy-in from members of the family, who typically don’t settle for their beloved one’s determination to transform. In such a state of affairs, the one approach to override the needs of the quick subsequent of kin is to acquire what the state of New Jersey calls a “funeral agent”. This particular person is designated by the prisoner earlier than loss of life to deal with burial choices. However the course of for attaining a funeral agent is just not simple, and one is barely helpful insofar {that a} decedent, or his funeral agent, can afford the prices related to burials — a tall order for a lot of imprisoned folks.
In relation to our burial rites, we’re confronted with a black gap. We’re not given the data we want concerning the technique of securing these rites, nor do we all know if there’s a correct manner for imprisoned Muslims in New Jersey – many serving extraordinarily lengthy sentences – to make sure our burial needs are carried out. With out the company as Muslim prisoners to elect our burial preferences, we worry being cremated in opposition to our spiritual beliefs.
Combating for a mechanism
The New Jersey Administrative Code incorporates the foundations governing how state legal guidelines are carried out. Based on the part on the burial or cremation of unclaimed bodies of prisoners: “An unclaimed body shall be cremated where it is reasonably believed that it would not violate the religious tenets of the deceased inmate.”
Mujahid and different Muslim prisoners together with myself have tried to petition for and set up a mechanism inside NJDOC to make sure Islamic final rites for Muslim prisoners. These efforts embody complaints submitted by means of a proper channel for prisoners. Mujahid confirmed me letters he mailed to organisations together with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations and pro-bono attorneys requesting help, however nobody responded. Earlier than he died, he had additionally pursued a spiritual discrimination lawsuit.
Prisoners have additionally petitioned to have the ability to submit a remaining authorized will recording their needs to be buried in line with Islamic doctrine.
With the ability to select is essential. With out such a mechanism, choices about what occurs to the physique after loss of life might fall to an unsympathetic member of the family or the state. NJSP authorities sometimes depend on a prisoner’s emergency contact kind to find out who’s contacted first a few loss of life and what to do with the physique. That particular person might refuse or be unable to assert a physique as a result of monetary burden, spiritual disagreements or any variety of different causes. Generally, they’re not alive.
Through the years, jail chaplains have defined to me what they perceive occurs to the physique of a deceased prisoner. Usually, the physique is saved in chilly storage, normally by the county’s health worker officer. It’s thought of unclaimed if no funeral executor or member of the family is recognized and contacted.
At this level, inevitably, we’re pressured to ask: What then will occur to the physique? All we all know is that the state will resolve.
That is the query many Muslim prisoners requested after Mujahid handed away, as we apprehensive whether or not a member of the family would declare his physique. It’s additionally one I posed to Victor Lee, NJDOC’s spiritual coordinator, when he visited the power in 2022. He declined to remark.
With no particular process to elect and assure our burial preferences, many people have no idea what’s going to occur to us after we die.
Final-ditch requests
In my time at NJSP, not less than three Muslims have been cremated as an alternative of being correctly buried. Their names are Rahim, Alim, and Talib. A fourth Muslim, Abdullah, was buried by his household as a Christian. These are the names the lads took on after changing to Islam.
I couldn’t verify the precise dates of every loss of life. Even years had been tough to trace down. My reminiscence, fellow prisoners, and different individuals who knew the lads bought me solely this far: Abdullah died between 2006 and 2007; Rahim between 2011 and 2014; Talib between 2019 and 2021. Alim died in 2020. It’s exhausting to explain to folks on the surface the way in which time warps in jail, how the times, months and years mix collectively in a haze. I remorse the dearth of precision. These males had been my brothers, and I want I might inform you when precisely they died.
Within the circumstances of Talib and Abdullah, each had members of the family who refused to honour their burial preferences. For Alim, his household couldn’t afford burial, in line with a fellow prisoner who knew the household. (A typical Muslim burial can value about $6,000.) I’ve not been capable of finding something extra concerning the circumstances round Rahim’s cremation.
I knew every of those males not directly or one other and realized of their cremations by means of each shut acquaintances and previous and present jail chaplains. All had been members of our congregation. I’d see them commonly throughout Friday prayers and at spiritual courses and occasions. Abdullah was a light-skinned man with thinning hair who had the look of a dishevelled arithmetic professor and spoke in a exact, calculated manner. He was an excellent paralegal and regarded by all to be a sensible and caring man. Rahim, pleasant and outgoing, beloved to play playing cards and board video games. Talib had a silver beard and a mushy, quiet manner. A longtime meals companies employee, he beloved to prepare dinner. Alim was a paralegal and a jail mentor. I had recognized him since arriving at NJSP and he was a pricey pal of mine.
Each Talib and Alim had submitted self-made wills to numerous jail departments declaring their burial preferences. Muslim prisoners right here typically resort to making a generic doc with paralegals which resembles a remaining will. Some folks have even had copies of those paperwork notarised by notary personnel organized by the jail and accepted by numerous jail departments. (I’ve seen this occur, and I helped Talib fill his out.) For a lot of prisoners, these are a last-ditch try to safe some readability on their rites. It isn’t clear what authorized significance these paperwork carry, or whether or not or how they had been consulted after the deaths of Talib and Alim.
NJDOC didn’t reply to questions offered by Al Jazeera and the Jail Journalism Mission.
Dying by imprisonment
The anxiousness about final rites stems largely from the truth that dying in jail within the state of New Jersey will or may very well be a actuality for a lot of prisoners, together with myself.
The state has one of many harshest sentencing schemes within the nation and a number of the worst racial disparities within the nation. Based on a 2022 report by the New Jersey Felony Sentencing and Disposition Fee, Black folks account for 61 % of the jail inhabitants, and solely 13 % of the state inhabitants.
The report confirms what I’ve seen with my very own eyes. On the day I arrived at NJSP, I keep in mind getting into the mess corridor the place we eat and catching my first glimpse of the rows upon rows of metallic tables, every desk with 4 chrome steel stools melded to it. They had been overwhelmingly occupied by Black and Latino folks. The white folks I noticed may very well be counted on one hand. That is still the identical immediately.
Previous to the abolishment of the loss of life penalty in New Jersey, I used to be one of many final legal defendants tried for capital punishment within the state. After the jury declined the loss of life penalty, I received a punishment of 150 years for a double murder, for which I preserve my innocence. That successfully sentenced me to loss of life by incarceration. The typical life expectancy of a New Jersey man is about 80 years. At 25 years of age with no prior run-ins with the regulation, I used to be given a sentence that might see me imprisoned for 70 years past the state’s common life expectancy. With one of many longest sentences on this state jail system, the prospect of loss of life behind bars is a real concern for me.
Not like others inside, I’m lucky to have a loving household. I’m a single man with no youngsters, however I’m blessed with loving dad and mom, a brother and sister-in-law and their two stunning youngsters. I even have just a few different kinfolk and constant associates who’ve supported me throughout my imprisonment. This help is invaluable each emotionally and financially.
Though I’ve saved a gradual job for about 17 years, it might be extraordinarily exhausting to outlive with out my family members. My meagre jail wages can not even cowl my phone charges. And there’s no assure that my family members will likely be there after I meet my finish. Being away for a lifetime alienates prisoners like me from new family members who don’t have any connection to these of us serving life sentences. One other chance is that even when my household is round, there is no such thing as a assure that they are going to be capable of afford my burial prices.
If there was a transparent course of to state my burial needs, I might begin now to attempt to make my very own preparations.
‘I don’t need to be burned’
The problem of ultimate rites stays a relentless supply of hysteria for a lot of Muslims at NJSP.
Throughout our many conversations at work within the chapel, Sheikh Rafique has typically expressed concern about this difficulty.
“Many older Muslim brothers are worried about getting buried since most of their families have passed away and living relatives don’t even know them. The NJDOC needs to make this process a priority,” Sheikh Rafique instructed me shortly after Mujahid died.
Sheikh Rafique’s 90-year-old mom had handed away not too lengthy earlier than that, in late December of 2021. He was heartbroken. For years, she had visited her son virtually each Saturday — travelling on two trains from Newark, the place she lived, to the jail in Trenton — till her well being began to flag in her 80s. Sheikh Rafique instructed me he felt blessed to have a loving household; even his siblings’ youngsters knew and beloved him. He wasn’t too apprehensive about them taking good care of him when the time got here, however he didn’t need to be a burden to anybody in his household when he left. Like different Muslims at NJSP, he wished he had a approach to make his personal burial preparations with an out of doors Islamic organisation or funeral parlour.
Marko “Abdul Mu’izz” Bey, one other fellow Muslim prisoner, got here to see our jail chaplain Sheikh El-Chebli and Sheikh Rafique for a counselling session just a few days after the loss of life of Mujahid. Bey, who’s in his mid-50s, had spent many years on loss of life row earlier than the loss of life penalty was banned, and appears to have resigned himself to dying in jail. When he visited the chapel, his mom had not too long ago handed away, and he was anxious to do one thing to safe his personal remaining rites. “Man, they need to figure this janazah stuff out, I don’t want to be burned, brother,” he confided.
One other Muslim prisoner, who’s serving a life sentence and requested to stay nameless, is scared one thing related might occur to him. “My family ostracised me for converting, and now I’m worried that when I pass away they will either refuse to let me be buried as a Muslim or will refuse to claim my body and I will be burned,” he confided. He had come to submit a self-made will to the chaplaincy division just a few weeks after the loss of life and cremation of Alim in 2020.
A Muslim burial
In the long run, our jail chaplain Sheikh El-Chebli intervened to advocate for Mujahid’s burial rites. This isn’t sometimes a part of the job description.
The particular person on the emergency contact kind didn’t settle for Mujahid’s physique, however Sheikh El-Chebli efficiently situated his brother, his subsequent of kin, who’s a practising Muslim in Philadelphia. He accepted Mujahid’s physique.
After Mujahid’s loss of life, our neighborhood mourned. Many individuals got here to the chapel to discuss him and the help he had offered us all around the years. It was simple, for a second, to think about us present on the surface, as if we had been visiting Mujahid’s house to pay him the respects he so dearly deserved.
Practically one month after Mujahid died, Sheikh El-Chebli relayed to Sheikh Rafique and myself that Mujahid had been buried as a Muslim. We had been overjoyed. “Alhamdulillah!” we cried, turning to one another.
Mujahid’s case turned out the perfect it might thanks to numerous particular person efforts. However there stays no assure that we gained’t should endure the same trauma subsequent time a Muslim brother dies. When that occurs, our brother and our neighborhood is probably not so lucky.
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