SpearIt, American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam (First Edition Design, 2017)
America has the largest incarcerated population in the world. This staggering and troubling fact has driven a great deal of scholarship. Much of this research has shown that mass incarceration in America is facilitated by systemic racial discrimination, which disproportionately affects African-American and Latinx communities. Only recently have scholars focused on the role of religion in American prisons.\nIn American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam (First Edition Design, 2017), SpearIt, Professor in the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, brings the subject of incarcerated Muslims into focus. The collection of essays synthesizes SpearIt\u2019s legal and academic work on issues of conversion, radicalization, and Muslim prisoner rights. Overall, the collection demonstrates that prisons are a crucial space for understanding the history of Muslims in America. In our conversation we discussed how Muslims have shaped religious life in prisons, the everyday challenges of incarceration, prison as a center for religious conversion, reasons prisoners chose Islam while incarcerated, prison administrators\u2019 and policy makers\u2019 definitions of radicalization, Muslim hip hop in the age of mass incarceration, incarcerated Latinx communities, and strategies to improve the criminal justice system.\nKristian Petersen\xa0is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of\xa0Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab\xa0(Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled\xa0The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes\xa0Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology\xa0(ILEX Foundation) and\xa0New Approaches to Islam in Film\xa0(Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his\xa0website, follow him on Twitter\xa0@BabaKristian, or email him at\xa0kpeterse@odu.edu.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law