The early-afternoon light casts a pale glow into the theater at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. More than 100 blue-garbed inmates, kneeling barefoot on blankets spread over the concrete floor, bow east toward Mecca. Not a sound is heard.
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“Fasting is a shield, a protection from temptation,” says Firdausi. “Fasting can save you from abusing someone, from fornication, from backbiting. When Satan asks you to do something you shouldn’t, you can always say ‘Today I am fasting.’ And there are rewards for going without food and drink. Breaking the fast brings the enjoyment of the bounty you have been without, and in the hereafter there is the pleasure of meeting Allah.”
Firdausi moves on to his topic of the day, the doctrine of “taqwa,” which he defines as “God consciousness, that divine spark that is in all of us.”
“My lessons are geared to the everyday,” Firdausi explains. “I stay with the basics, the dos and don’ts of Islam and the message in the Koran.”
Firdausi appears to have found an audience at Stateville. His Ramadan sermon goes on for nearly an hour, and while some worshipers take the occasion to nap, the bulk of them listen intently. Bernard Taylor, a Chicagoan in his late 30s incarcerated for a narcotics crime (and the only inmate who will talk for the record), calls Firdausi “a very good man. He has showed us the right path.”
