“They just can’t get past [that I am] Black… and formerly incarcerated. It’s like, ‘Okay, well, that’s who Malcolm [X] was. You say you love Malcolm—I’m one of his sons… You say you love him, but you don’t see me. How?’”
That’s what one man from South Los Angeles, Kareem[1] told me during a field interview when I asked about his experience as a Blackamerican Muslim convert navigating American Muslim spaces after prison. Upon finding Islam in prison and devoting himself to its practice—a lifeline that had given him structure, clarity, and a sense of belonging—he expected to be welcomed as a brother. Instead, he encountered quiet distance, implicit suspicion, and a sense that his presence disrupted something delicate.
“This essay explores how colorblind piety—an ideology that asserts Islam’s transcendence of race—functions as a gatekeeping mechanism within American Muslim communities.”
This essay explores how colorblind piety—an ideology that asserts Islam’s transcendence of race—functions as a gatekeeping mechanism within American Muslim communities. While framed as a universal ethic, colorblind piety tacitly defines the boundaries of belonging in ways that discredit and exclude Blackamerican men who come to Islam through the U.S. carceral system. This ideology is often anchored in the Prophet Muhammad’s final sermon:
An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; a white person has no superiority over a Black person, nor a Black person over a white person—except by piety and good action.
The sermon is widely invoked as proof of Islam’s anti-racist ethic. And indeed, many of the men I interviewed expressed deep reverence for this ideal. For some, it was what drew them to Islam in the first place. But when cited uncritically—without confronting the racialized conditions of Muslim life in the U.S.—it can become a rhetorical shield: a way to say race doesn’t matter, while ignoring the ways race still determines who is seen, trusted, and welcomed.
This essay is grounded in over sixty in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated Blackamerican Muslim men, as well as ethnographic observations and supplemental interviews conducted in a U.S. prison where an Islamic-based rehabilitative curriculum was being implemented and evaluated. These men’s experiences illuminate patterns of racial and carceral exclusion that resonate across multiple communal contexts. Their accounts offer a critical lens into how American Muslim life is shaped by broader hierarchies of race, punishment, and religious legitimacy that structure the social terms of recognition, participation, and inclusion through socially patterned thresholds of admissibility.
This essay is grounded in over sixty in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated Blackamerican Muslim men, as well as ethnographic observations and supplemental interviews conducted in a U.S. prison where an Islamic-based rehabilitative curriculum was being implemented and evaluated.
I use the term Blackamerican, following Sherman Jackson[2], to emphasize the distinct historical formation of Black people in the U.S.—whose identity is shaped not by recent immigration, but by the afterlives of slavery, segregation, and systemic exclusion. This distinction matters: for these men, Islam did not arrive through family tradition or global networks. It arrived through the U.S. prison system—a uniquely racialized site of both punishment and spiritual seeking.
Within American Muslim communities—especially those led by immigrant institutions or aligned with public-facing, institutionalized forms of Islam—conversion is typically imagined in one of two ways. Either it is a relational encounter with Muslim community life (through campus Muslim Student Associations, interfaith events, or marriage), or it unfolds as an individual journey sparked by exposure to ‘authentic Islam’ through books, lectures, or online content. In contrast, many Blackamerican men convert not through outreach or inquiry, but through existential confrontation with state violence. Their turn to Islam is not just spiritual—it is racial, political, and redemptive. It is a reclamation of dignity and self-definition within a system designed to deny both. Prison conversion unsettles normative constructs of who counts as a legitimate Muslim.
“Their turn to Islam is not just spiritual—it is racial, political, and redemptive. It is a reclamation of dignity and self-definition within a system designed to deny both. Prison conversion unsettles normative constructs of who counts as a legitimate Muslim.”
In communities shaped by race-neutral religiosity, Islam is celebrated when conversion reaffirms the moral universality of the faith. But when conversion occurs through incarceration—particularly when the convert is a Blackamerican man whose body already signifies criminality in the dominant racial imagination—it carries the compounded weight of racial and carceral stigma. Colorblind piety might acknowledge that someone “found Islam in prison,” but only when the story follows a familiar redemptive arc: I was broken, the system was right to punish me, and Islam helped me become a better person. This framing treats prison as a morally neutral—if not necessary—stage for personal transformation. It affirms the individual’s growth while leaving the moral authority of the system intact.
But many Blackamerican converts to Islam do not experience prison as a just response to wrongdoing. They experience it as a regime of racial punishment intended to break them. Within that context, their turn to Islam did not follow the presumed narrative of guilt, failure, and reform. It emerged from a pursuit of meaning within a system sustained by dehumanization. As Liddell recalled, “There wasn’t no Muslim chaplains. We had to fight, file lawsuits, get in physical altercations with staff… It was with the White people, White boys, the Mexicans. The incarcerated people, we were the ones who led that fight.” His account makes clear that religious formation inside prison was not facilitated by the system—it was forged in defiance of it. For these men, Islam is not redemptive in the way colorblind piety understands it—as a sign of moral recovery aligned with communal ideals. Instead, it is a practice born in confinement, marked by political consciousness and spiritual self-determination.
This is the tension that colorblind piety cannot resolve. It makes room for religious transformation when that transformation supports prevailing moral frameworks. Faith that emerges from incarceration is admissible only when it aligns with communal expectations around personal responsibility and rehabilitation. But when faith is formed under conditions of racial control and institutional punishment, it falls outside the bounds of recognition. Inclusion alone does not interrogate the deeper architecture that renders their faith unrecognizable—it simply offers a circumscribed welcome within an unchanged framework. Colorblind piety cannot hold that kind of complexity. Instead, it rewards silence, conformity, and discourses that preserve the moral innocence of the institutions that confine.
This essay is not a critique of Islam. It is a reflection on how Islamic ideals—particularly the aspiration toward racial unity—become entangled with hegemonic social ideologies that obscure lived realities. In a communal context where racial hierarchies remain unspoken but deeply embedded, even sincere expressions of piety can take on unintended meanings. When phrases like “we are all one” or “Islam doesn’t see race” are repeated without reflection, they risk reinforcing the very exclusions they aim to transcend.
Illegible Authority: From Disciplined in Prison to Dismissed in Public
If colorblind piety confers religious stature, it also shapes who is permitted to speak with authority. For many Blackamerican men who converted in prison, their religious insight cultivated through years of study, teaching, and leadership under confinement fails to carry weight in Muslim communities outside. While their sincerity may be acknowledged, their knowledge is often regarded as emotionally compelling but intellectually tenuous. What counted as respected leadership in prison—discipline, scholarship, and mentorship—is quietly dismissed once it enters public Muslim life. In spaces where religious esteem is granted through overseas training, institutional affiliation, or cultural affinity, prison-born piety remains peripheral: visible but not authoritative; respected in spirit, but denied standing.
This contrast is all the more striking given the formal religious leadership many of these men carried while incarcerated. Deion, for instance, developed and led a structured prayer curriculum inside prison. “Prayer is my forte… I started teaching the prayer class… They had to learn their prayer in English. They had to learn their prayer in Arabic. They had to be able to demonstrate… in both Arabic and English… But in the end, they all respected me.” Similarly, Jayce was trusted as both practitioner and teacher. Appointed as a Muslim clerk in prison and regularly delivering Friday sermons under a chaplain’s supervision, he held a position that signified both institutional and spiritual trust—earned through consistency and service.
And yet, across interviews, men revealed how such authority often failed to translate beyond the prison walls. As Kareem put it: “[They] know that I’m sharp [but] just can’t get past [that I’m] Black…and formerly incarcerated.”
Tahir experienced this subtle exclusion—not through overt rejection, but through the quiet erosion of his position as a religious equal. During his incarceration, he had developed deep Islamic literacy: he could recite in Arabic, lead prayer, and teach other men with confidence and clarity. But outside, that expertise was rarely recognized. He described the condescension he encountered from other Muslims, particularly those of Arab descent, who viewed his religious development with skepticism rather than solidarity. “Sometimes instead of our Arab brothers and sisters being patient with us… they can see that we have some type of prowess of Arabic… ‘Why do I have to be beneath you?’” he asked. “‘Why can’t we just be brothers?’” His question pointed beyond interpersonal tension; it was a critique of the racial and institutional hierarchies that define whose knowledge counts. His reputation was undermined by where and how he had learned it—within prison walls and outside the circuits of recognized Islamic institutions. In many American Muslim communities, spiritual leadership depends on accepted standards of religious decorum, which in turn, determines who is granted full belonging.
In many American Muslim communities, spiritual leadership depends on accepted standards of religious decorum, which in turn, determines who is granted full belonging.
Demarcus exemplified what that dismissal looks like in practice—how, for formerly incarcerated Blackamerican men, the devaluation of religious standing is not just institutional, but deeply racialized and relational. In prison, he had found spiritual kinship and shared responsibility: “It was one cohesive unit… someone you could go to or get advice or food.” Outside, the loss of that spiritual kinship was immediate. “When I go to the mosque,” he explained, “there’s more Middle Easterns than Blacks, and the Middle Easterns tend to look at me odd. Like, why am I here? Like I’m imposing.” Sometimes mistaken as Arab or Latino due to his appearance, Demarcus described how perceptions shifted the moment he was identified as Black—and even more so when others learned he had converted in prison. “‘You’re not Middle Eastern. Oh, you’re Black. Oh, okay. And you learned it in prison? Hmm.’ Now I’ve got two strikes against me…and they take a step or two back away from me… it comes with all kinds of other stigmas.”
Kareem echoed this experience: “I always feel like an outsider. If they view me as Middle Eastern, they’re more accepting. But once they find out I’m strictly American, that I’m Black, those roadblocks start happening.” His presence, his past, and even his piety became suspect because he disrupted the prevailing religious aesthetic and racial order of American Islam. Like many others, Demarcus had internalized the need to hide his past in any attempt to belong: “I don’t share that I’ve been in prison to other people… I don’t want other Muslims looking at me like that.”
His presence, his past, and even his piety became suspect because he disrupted the prevailing religious aesthetic and racial order of American Islam.
The disregard for prison-formed religious gravitas reflects an attachment to specific forms of practice that signal authorized religious expression—where piety functions as display, carefully attuned to cultural expectations. For many of these men, belonging was contingent not on faith itself, but on how well they could perform cultural markers of trustworthiness. Recognition as a religious authority became less a reflection of internal transformation and more a response to external legibility, shaped by the pressure to translate their experiences into recognizable religious expression.
Disavowed in Freedom: Race, Reentry, and the Denial of Muslim Support
If colorblind piety disciplines spiritual expression, it also displaces communal responsibility. The same logic that renders carceral faith unrecognizable allows reentry needs to go unmet—because to see those needs clearly would mean acknowledging the racial fault lines that colorblindness denies. For many formerly incarcerated Blackamerican Muslim converts, reentry is a spiritual dislocation. The faith that sustained them inside does not automatically guarantee belonging outside. They return to Muslim communities that treat incarceration as peripheral—acknowledged, perhaps, but not claimed. This is the logic of colorblind piety: the insistence that Islam transcends race determines whose struggles are recognized and whose are ignored.
They return to Muslim communities that treat incarceration as peripheral—acknowledged, perhaps, but not claimed. This is the logic of colorblind piety: the insistence that Islam transcends race determines whose struggles are recognized and whose are ignored.
Liddell, who spent over four decades incarcerated, offered one of the most sustained critiques of this neglect. “Since I’ve been out, I haven’t got any real resources from the Muslim community,” he explained. “I don’t talk to [the American Muslim] communities—not one of them has asked, ‘Hey, brother, what you need? We got you.’” He recalled attending various mosques across Northern California, hoping to find support: “I go to the Masjid… and I can’t even get a car. I gotta go to non-Muslims to try to get a car.” Although material aid was one form of absence, the deeper indictment was structural. “We don’t even have a Muslim halfway house,” he said. “We don’t have a Muslim resource center. None of that.” While other faith communities had built formal reentry infrastructures, Muslim communities—especially immigrant-led ones—had not. “So, when a Muslim gets out,” he concluded, “he gotta go to the Christians… because Muslims don’t have none, and they haven’t even been thinking about building it.”
This distance, as Liddell described it, was racialized. “The non-[Blackamerican] Muslim community,” he said plainly, “is not very supportive of people coming home.” Colorblind piety allows this distance to be maintained without appearing exclusionary. By insisting that all Muslims are one, it leaves unexamined the realities that fracture that unity in practice. Roscoe made a similar observation when reflecting on the gap between Islamic ideals and lived experience. “I think that if Allah created all of us, and we’re all human beings, we’re all one family,” he said. “But when the race thing come in, I think [American Muslims] can do a better job with inclusion and with more compassion.” Like many others, he entered Islam drawn by its universalism, only to encounter a community where racialized boundaries were simply renamed as neutral standards.
When asked what he hoped would come from this research, Liddell called for structural accountability. “You got Muslims that’s multimillionaires,” he said. “Got all kind of money… but ain’t nobody saying, ‘Hey, bro, here’s this.’” He framed the absence of institutional support not as oversight, but as disavowal. “They don’t view incarceration as like a Muslim problem,” he explained. “That’s like a Black problem.”
Like many others, he entered Islam drawn by its universalism, only to encounter a community where racialized boundaries were simply renamed as neutral standards.
Kareem affirmed this critique, identifying the gaps in reentry support: “They’re not ready for us when we come home—that’s a major-major structural [issue].” His reflections amplified Liddell’s: beyond the absence of care was a lack of infrastructure. Kareem called for tangible support—financial stipends, entrepreneurial aid, job opportunities within Muslim institutions—and noted that even those few jobs were often filled by non-Muslims. The implication was unmistakable: Muslim institutions were outsourcing their own responsibilities while neglecting the men most in need of support.
That racial boundary didn’t just shape who received help—it shaped whose suffering counted. Past efforts to build Muslim-led reentry services, he said, “never really came to nothing”—not because the need was unclear, but because it was associated with a racialized profile of criminality, a form of Blackness the American Muslim community has treated as incompatible with belonging. This is where colorblind piety reveals its quiet betrayal: by refusing to see race, it permits the reproduction of racial exclusion under the banner of religious unity. To acknowledge these men’s experiences would require confronting the racialized structures that Islam, in its idealized form, claims to neutralize.
The Faith They Refuse to See: Colorblind Piety and the Politics of Recognition
This essay is about how legitimacy is conferred, how piety is read, and how race shapes both. Formerly incarcerated Blackamerican Muslim men who convert in prison are rendered illegible because the framework through which American Muslim communities recognize piety is narrow, culturally coded, and quietly racialized. Colorblind piety insists that Islam sees no race, but in practice, it sets the terms of recognition in ways that exclude. Those terms are not neutral—they are shaped by where, how, and through whom faith is acquired. Recognition depends on the conditions under which faith is formed—and prison is not one of them.
This essay is about how legitimacy is conferred, how piety is read, and how race shapes both. Formerly incarcerated Blackamerican Muslim men who convert in prison are rendered illegible because the framework through which American Muslim communities recognize piety is narrow, culturally coded, and quietly racialized.
These men reveal the limits of a moral framework—guilt, punishment, reform, redemption—that presents itself as absolute while quietly policing the boundaries of belonging. Their exclusion reveals that recognition is not grounded in faith itself, but in conformity to dominant expectations: Arabic fluency, institutional training, immigrant familiarity, and the absence of carceral history. When piety is formed outside those terms—behind bars, through Blackamerican networks, in defiance of the system—it becomes unreadable. In this lies the aperçu: what passes as an ethic of moral equality functions, in practice, as a mechanism of racial boundary-making.
Roscoe began to describe this exclusion explicitly—how race, incarceration, and criminalization converge to make his faith illegible to those who invoke brotherhood but withhold belonging. “Even though I spent all them years in prison…”
But partway through, his tone shifted, settling into quiet resolve. He offered something that felt like a declaration, not to justify himself, but to testify to what anchored him:
“I just lived to wake up to worship Allah and to do the right things, and to be the best person that I can be that day…”
Then again, his voice changed—this time rising with a kind of transcendence, as if lifting himself beyond both memory and judgement:
“It wasn’t the prison that I was locked up in—it was like Islam took over me so much that I felt free in prison.”
Yet once he walks free, what sustained him inside is dismissed by those who claim him in faith but not in fellowship, revealing, with unmistakable clarity, where the boundaries of belonging still lie.
Laila H. Noureldin, Ph.D. is an applied sociologist and independent consultant whose work interrogates the racial, relational, and structural dimensions of the carceral state. Drawing on multi-method research with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men across the U.S., her work explores how people reconstruct meaning and reconcile identity within systems built to contain. She examines how frameworks like faith, dignity, and selfhood emerge as forms of resistance, narrative power, and existential clarity within carceral regimes.
[1] All names and identifying details have been altered to protect the anonymity of participants.
[2] Jackson, Sherman A. 2005. Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. New York: Oxford University Press.