Muslims in Texas Prisons (Part 3)
Picture this: a Christian chaplain reaches out to Tayba, requesting services for the Muslim community in his prison. This simple act of reaching out sparked a chain of events that led to something truly remarkable.
We’ve shared a few stories about our collaboration with Chaplain Baquee Sabur out in TX to help reach underserved Muslim communities in his state.
Well, the Christian chaplain we introduced him to took another step by challenging us:
“The Christian ministries hold events and distribute gifts to entire prison blocks. They don’t look at the prisoner’s faith. Can the Muslim community do the same thing at this prison?”
You see, when Muslims hold events in prison (which is rare enough on its own), we normally organize them for the incarcerated Muslims only.
So we could only have one response…
Challenge accepted!
With Eid al Fitr just around the corner, Chaplain Baquee led the charge, raising the necessary funds and rallying local community members. Tayba provided educational resources needed for the program.
Alhamdulillah, on the day of Eid, a large group of Muslim volunteers hosted an event for over 300 attendees, complete with an Eid prayer, a delicious feast and enlightening educational talks, including one in Spanish!
You can watch Chaplain Baquee’s introduction and the prison chaplain’s warm response, check out this video:
On top of that, over 500 gift bags containing hygiene products and socks were distributed to the entire prison unit.
The first - and the best!
The Texas prison administration has informed us that this event was the first one in their state where the Muslim community has ever served an entire prison unit!
On top of that, the feedback we received from the participants was overwhelming.
Many expressed that these were the best gift bags they had ever received during their time of incarceration.
Others praised the food as the best they had tasted behind bars.
And overwhelmingly, both Muslims and non-Muslims have told us that they really enjoyed the event and appreciated our visit.
