A judge in Alaska has determined that the state must pay $100,000 in damages for Muslim inmates who were allegedly mistreated during their religious holiday of Ramadan.
According to ADN.com, “As part of the settlement, the state will pay $102,500 to plaintiffs Anas Dowl and Ernest Jacobsson. The settlement also requires changes in the way the Department of Corrections feeds prisoners during Ramadan and in the way prisoners are permitted to pray.”
CAIR trial attorney Carolyn Homer stated, “Accommodating Muslim prisoners in prisons around the country has been a perennial problem,” going on to say that the new agreement with the state of Alaska “is one of the comprehensive accommodation provisions that CAIR has ever seen, and we intend to hold it up as a model for how Muslim inmates can be accommodated.”
Sarah Gallagher, an officer at the Department of Corrections, said that approximately 45 inmates took part in a Ramadan celebration this year and were inhibited from practicing their religious observance properly as they were not given food after their fasting period.
Now employees will also be forced to undergo “religious sensitivity training” in order to accommodate the Muslims in prison.
Anchorage Daily News has more on the suit:
The lawsuit was filed in 2018 against Dean Williams, the commissioner of corrections under then-Gov. Bill Walker. The settlement was approved Friday by federal Anchorage District Court Judge H. Russel Holland, and the case has been closed.
Observant Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset during the 29 or 30 days of Ramadan, meaning that state-held prisoners who observe the fast cannot participate in regular meal schedules. The lawsuit alleged that the alternative meals offered to Dowl and Jacobsson were dangerously meager and that Muslim inmates were being starved.
Why is it never the case that when Christians are the ones being done wrongly, someone advocates or accommodates them?