Over the weekend, the Washington Post profiled the work of chaplains in Virginia state prisons, where the corrections department has contracted $25,000 with a Muslim chaplain organization to provide that service, and $780,000 funding those who are Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal, despite a greatly increasing Muslim prison population. It's a fascinating read detailing the challenges, and importance of this work.
Much of the work for Goraya and 15 other volunteer chaplains involves navigating the gulf between guards and Muslim inmates. It's an agenda challenged by the nature of prison-based Islam, in which inmates instruct one another about the faith, and most incarcerated adherents are converts.
When Muslim inmates complain that guards are not allowing them to pray, Goraya addresses those concerns with the warden.
Meanwhile, Muslim inmates sometimes claim they are not permitted to take orders from female prison guards.
"Is that really a part of the religion?" one prison employee asked Goraya, who shook his head, setting the record straight.
"We're here to preach moderation to the extremists and to defend the needs of the moderate Muslims," Goraya said.
