The Immorality of Incarceration: Between Jāvēd Aḥmad Ghāmidī and Angela Y. Davis

Abstract

The carceral nature of America’s criminal system has become a subject of fierce debate over the past few years as the extent of incarceration has gained notoriety. As a result, the decades-old argument for the abolition of prison has received its greatest reception to date, becoming the subject of popular conversation and a plethora of scholarly articles. Much of this discussion has centered on diagnosing the causes of mass incarceration. Empirical and historical studies have offered a strong case for the pervasive role of racial animus and discrimination in expanding the carceral state, which in turn has produced an abolitionist response as remedy to a broken system. At the same time, contexts far removed from America’s racial paradigm have also produced fierce critiques of incarceration. The introduction of prisons by European colonial powers met with native resistance across the Global South and, in the period since, a range of scholarly writing has continued to challenge prisons. Among the Global South’s most prominent examples of this abolitionist response has been those from scholars of Islamic law. These jurists have offered critiques that argue for both a doctrinal incongruence between incarceration and the Islamic legal tradition, as well as a moral chastisement of the carceral state. This Essay seeks to explore one such critique that represents a strand of abolitionist thinking in the Islamic legal tradition. While the American discourse has been preoccupied with abolition as a remedy for mass incarceration, the Islamic discourse is largely devoid of this concern; it critiques the institution of prison itself. The Essay’s overarching aim is to show how perspectives from the Global South, in this case Islamic law, might inform new approaches to abolition in other contexts. To accomplish this, the piece uses the thought of Muslim jurist and intellectual, Jāvēd Aḥmad Ghāmidī, examining both his ideas on imprisonment and broader approach to questions of law and morality. It then brings this discourse into conversation with key ideas in the work of American scholar–activist Angela Yvonne Davis. The animating inquiry will center on the moral arguments made in support of prison abolition and how Ghāmidī’s ideas, and by extension Islamic law, offer a unique perspective on this timely matter.