Who are we?

Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Council for Social Justice (CSJ) Muslim Prisoners Support Project (MPSP)  main objective is to support Muslim inmates in detention and correctional facilities by providing them with prayer services, Islamic education, equipment/supplies, and resources to ensure that they are given their full rights and are treated in a civil manner. More information can be found on icnacsj.org/mpsp

What is the campaign about?

The Central Detention Facility (CDF) in Washington, DC has around 450 Muslims that need Qur'ans, hijabs, islamic education, khateebs, etc. This campaign is to tackle one of the needs of the Muslims in this facility: prayer rugs. The Muslims need prayer rugs for praying individually and the bigger prayer rugs for praying together at Jumuah. We want to buy 200 prayer rugs, around $20 each. The prayer rug is a regular prayer rug that you would use at home, see image below for reference:

Why do Muslim inmates need prayer rugs in the first place?

Prison is not a luxury place and it is not a clean place. Cleanliness is part of Islam and we are taught to pray in a clean place. We need to provide a clean area for our Muslim brothers and sisters to pray. We do not want our brothers and sisters to be deprived of such a basic need that they should have to put their head down in a dirty area.

Why do Muslim inmates need individual and group prayer rugs?

 Inmates are not allowed to move within the facility with prayer rugs. The individual prayer rug will be kept inside their cell to use daily and the group prayer rugs will be kept at a location to be used for Friday Jumuah only.

Why are you asking for so much money, can't you buy cheap prayer rugs or have them donated?

It is true there are cheap prayer rugs that can be bought for $1-5 each. These prayer rugs are not good quality, will not last a long time and most importantly, it will be used as contraband according to the experts of the prison. We want to honor our Muslim brothers and sisters and give them a gift of brand-new prayer rugs. From the get-go of our project, we have never handed anything to our Muslim brothers and sisters (Qur’an, Hijab, books, etc.) except that it was brand new. I would not want to be given a hand-me-down as a gift and I do not ever want to give second-rate items as gifts to others. Each prayer rug costs around $20 (we want to buy 200 for 450 people), we are asking for $4,000 because not everyone will need a prayer rug right away and we want to be realistic in trying to get $4,000 for our first fundraising for the cause.