Va. Inmate’s Win in Suit Against Government a Rarity

Rashid Qawi Al-Amin {snip} won a settlement with the state that forces the prison system to supply him, and the Greensville Correctional Center library, with Muslim reading materials, CDs and DVDs. He’ll also receive $2,000.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office decided to settle the seven-year legal battle after a series of court rulings in Al-Amin’s favor. {snip}

The case highlights a trend among state and federal prisoners, many of them converted Muslims, fighting for their rights to practice their faith.

In 1989, Al-Amin, then known as Donald Tracey Jones, was convicted in Norfolk Circuit Court of murder and use of a firearm, and sentenced to 52 years in prison. Police said the shooting was drug-related. Jones, a New York native, was in his early 20s at the time. He’s scheduled to be released in 2016.

Not long after entering prison, he changed his name to Rashid Qawi Al-Amin, which in Arabic means “wise, strong and trustworthy.” He says the prison system refused to acknowledge his new name.

Al-Amin became part of a swell of converts to Islam within America’s prisons. Some joined the Nation of Islam while others chose the Sunni or Shia sects. Al-Amin became a Sunni. Corrections officials sometimes refer to the religion as Prislam.

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Al-Amin filed this religious rights suit in 2004. U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson in Norfolk dismissed it in 2005 on procedural grounds, but the federal appeals court reinstated it. That process alone took three years.

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Over the next two years, motions were filed back and forth, and another appeal ensued on a minor issue over who exactly should be sued. Late last year, Jackson finally set the case for trial. It was supposed to have begun May 10, but Jackson ordered both sides to try to settle the matter.

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The settlement calls for the Department of Corrections to spend up to $2,500 on Islamic library materials for the Greensville Correctional Center, where Al-Amin is housed. The department will also hire a Muslim inmate to work in the library. And inmates at Greensville will be allowed to donate religious materials to the library, subject to security review.

Al-Amin was even allowed to submit his own list of Islamic reading materials, movies and CDs.

The department also agreed to allow Al-Amin to use his religious name and to allow inmates to assist in the preparation of religious meals. Finally, the department agreed to pay Al-Amin $2,000 to cover the costs he expended fighting the suit, mostly for filing fees and postage.

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