Given that up to 15% of the U.S. prison population is Muslim (see previous post on facts and figures), it's not surprising that the courts have had to deal frequently with questions of Islamic religious practice in the prison setting.
The U.S. Supreme Court addressed this issue in O'Lone v. Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342 (1987). The particular observance at issue was the Friday prayer, called jumu'a in Arabic, which is equivalent to the Jewish Sabbath or Christian Sunday services. All adult Muslim men are required to attend the jumu'a service, which must be performed in congregation (rather than individually) on Friday between noon and mid-afternoon (specifically defined as the period between when the sun is at its zenith and when it is at approximately a 45° angle in the sky).
New Jersey's Leesburg State Prison implemented regulations concerning prisoner work details that happened to make it impossible for minimum security Muslim prisoners to attend the jumu'a service. Some of the prisoners brought suit, alleging a violation of their right to free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the prison's policy on the grounds that it was reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. This remains the standard for inmates' free exercise claims even today.
Overall, the decision seems reasonable. However, the dissent (written by Justice Brennan) makes some good points about the treatment of Islam as compared to other, more familiar, religions and is well worth reading.
As mentioned above, there are a large number of cases involving Islamic religious practice in correctional facilities. I've selected four that illustrate some of the concerns.
Two of the cases deal with the five times daily ritual prayer the salat. Smith v. Elkins, 1992 U.S. App. LEXIS 1050 (9th Cir. 1992), concerns a Muslim inmate who recited the call to prayer and the salat in Arabic and was disciplined for "communicating in a foreign language". The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the prison's rule to be unconstitutionally vague and that it did not apply to prayer, which is not communication between inmates but communication between an inmate and God. Chatin v. Coombe, 186 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 1999) concerns a Muslim inmate who engaged in a silent individual prayer (salat) in the recreation yard and was disciplined for "conducting a religious service in an unauthorized area". The Second Circuit Court of Appeals found this rule to be unconsitutionally vague as well and that silent individual prayer was not a "religious service". In both cases, the regulation itself was valid, but its application to the inmates' performance of salat was inappropriate. If the salat was to be prohibited, regulations should specifically state it.
Another case deals with Ramadan, the month of fasting. In Makin v. Colorado Department of Corrections, 183 F.3d 1205 (10th Cir. 1999), an inmate was inhibited from fasting because he was not allowed to take his meals before dawn and after sunset. He managed to complete the fast anyway by keeping the food from daytime meal deliveries in his cell until the time he was permitted to eat but due to the conditions in his cell, he was only able to keep a small amount of food and thus faced substantial difficulty.
What's striking about this case is that the court (the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals) looked beyond the actions of fasting to the spiritual aspects:
As the testimony by Imam Kharrubi and Mr. Makin demonstrated, and the district court held, the burden defendants placed on Mr. Makin diminished the spiritual experience he otherwise could gain through Ramadan. This is sufficient to constitute an infringement on his right to freely exercise his religion.
Makin, supra at 1213.
The final case that I looked at is Johnson v. Baker, 1995 U.S. App. LEXIS 32117 (6th Cir. 1995). This concerns the relation of the Nation of Islam to orthodox or Sunni Islam. Although the Nation of Islam shares a name with orthodox Islam and some practices, its beliefs are so different from those of orthodox Islam and so contrary to the basic tenets of orthodox Islamic belief that most Sunni Muslims consider the NOI to be a different religion, one that has merely borrowed some Islamic trappings but is not Islam. The plaintiff Johnson, an NOI Muslim, likewise considered the two groups to be so distinct as to constitute two different religions. He therefore requested a separate religious service for NOI Muslims. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals denied this request on the grounds that having to attend the orthodox Islamic service did not place a substantial burden on Johnson's exercise of his religious beliefs.
One odd thing about this decision is that it seems to imply that orthodox Muslims believe in reincarnation, which is certainly not the case. This mistake may be the result of misunderstanding Johnson's explanation of the differences between the NOI and orthodox Islam. It does make me wonder if perhaps the court should have investigated those differences a bit more thoroughly, if it made such a basic error.