Why does the Islamic Restoration Society exist?
The seed of the Islamic Restoration Society – IRES was sown when Muslim Chaplains at federal institutions were requesting support from the Muslim community back in 2018. They could see all the support and services available to Christian inmates through Christian Prison Ministry Organizations.
Initially, the Islamic religious items such as books, prayer mat, Quran, kufi, etc. were informally collected from Islamic Organizations and donated to the institutions to help Muslim inmates practice their faith, and Muslim Chaplains deliver their Islamic services more effectively. With this, Muslim Chaplains started requesting Muslim Community Leaders and Imams to volunteer at the institutions to understand the needs of the Muslim brothers in the institution.
In 2019 Muslim Chaplains started bringing together the Muslim Community Leaders and Correctional System staff members During Ramadan to provide an opportunity to learn about Islamic Traditions and basics of Islam. Later on RCMP, Calgary Police Community Liaison Officers and Calgary Parole Officers also joined. This event was names “Annual Corrections and Law Enforcement Ramadan Dinner“.
In these interactions, one senior staff member from Drumheller Institution shared that he could remember the day they received their first Muslim inmate. According to the 2023 Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview, there were 1,709 Muslim inmates in Correctional Services Canada’s Federal Institutions, and unfortunately, it’s a growing trend.
Reasons for the growing trend of Muslim Population in prison is a topic for another article; however, it is clear that there needs to be a holistic approach to reduce the number of Muslims in the Criminal Justice System, along with its emotional and financial burden to larger Canadian Society’s taxpayers. IRES grew out of this need.
There needs to be a prevention effort to help Muslims, especially the first-generation immigrant Muslims, not end up in jail to start with. The second step is to invest in strategic efforts to educate our Muslim brothers and sisters in their forgotten or neglected Islamic identity and teachings. The third step is the help them reintegrate back to society and to successfully win them back to the Islamic Community. We train teams of 3-5 members from larger Muslim Organizations to take on the reintegration part of the triangle. Team members start volunteering with Muslim Chaplains to start bonding with interested Muslims in prison before their release in a purposeful and safe environment.
All the efforts above can be summarized as Restoring the Broken Bonds, so to speak, to reverse the desensitization of actions that are identified as sins in the Islamic faith. If we were able to eliminate or even reduce the sins in Muslims, we could effectively reduce the criminal cases, as most of the crimes are also sins at the same time.
