By Omar Mullick
Muslim Link Staff Writer
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Columbia, Maryland resident Fatima Steffanof is passionate about her cause to help Muslim sisters in prison during their incarceration and also in their transition to the real world when they leave. A single mother of four and a full time worker, Sister Fatima still finds time to help those incarcerated whom society and the Muslim community has largely forgotten. The bulk of her work involves setting up visits to take items of need like Qur’ans and hijabs once or twice a month at the weekends. The prison that she and a few other sisters visit is the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women (MCIW) in Jessup, Maryland.
In her day to day life, Fatima tries to round up as many volunteers as she can to accompany her and help meet the needs of the incarcerated sisters. This task has never proved easy. What surprised her most was that when she first attempted to get sisters involved “it was largely husbands who would not allow their wives to go.” The reasons she sights were a general stigma and irrational fear that something would happen to their wives at the correctional facility, a place that has more security than your average street. Currently, there are about 3 sisters and brothers involved in this project who make a consistent effort to observe the visiting hours which are usually on Friday and Saturday every week. “Peoples lives are busy and so we do the best that we can but the results are worth it when you get there,” she adds thoughtfully.
The reactions of the incarcerated sisters when they get visitors from the Muslim community are of “pure bliss. They often cry and are just plain happy to see you,” adds Sister Fatima. What proceeds then is the donation of sorely needed items in the form of books and Islamic clothing. The sisters chat, talk about the future and try to make a plan for how to help if someone has an impending release.
The process to actually become a visitor is a drawn out one that involves various stages of approval. The first step is a background check which takes a month to process. The next steps involve acquiring an identification card and being registered, which takes about two hours. Then the visitor can proceed to meet with the prisoner.
Sister Fatima exercises a sensitive approach to those who are incarcerated, focusing constructively on the future and how she might better their situation. She never asks why they are in there but sometimes, the sisters in prison will open a window to their lives and struggles that led them there. Whatever the reasons, the options for these sisters once they have paid their debt in prison are sometimes bleaker on the outside. “To put it bluntly, there is nothing for them out here, not even a dollar to catch the bus,” adds Sister Fatima.
It is no wonder than that the bulk of these sisters end up returning to prison when they have only the streets to answer their needs. “It’s fine to keep building Masjids, but there is a desperate need here for the most basic of human needs: shelter, food, work and it is going unanswered,” says Sister Fatima with great emphasis.
To bring the point home, Sister Fatima cites an example. One sister in her fifties emerged from prison with an address given to her where she could stay while on parole. When she arrived there with some difficulty, she found a crack house. Not wanting to get in harms way she left and found somewhere else to stay that satisfied her parole and also housed other emerging prisoners. The owners here stole from her pay. Remembering an old friend that she had known twenty-two years ago, she desperately looked them up. These were some of the first people to show her a modicum of kindness. They helped house her while she got on her feet. Undeterred by this horrific transition to the real world and firm in her faith to make good on this opportunity, she also reaped the benefit of hard study while she was incarcerated. In the mail she received notice that she was accepted to law school. Qualifying for some government aid because she literally had nothing, she found herself eligible for a welfare check to survive on that provided her with $185 a month. $100 of that amount went to her monthly bus pass. She lived on the other $85. In dire need of a computer for her schoolwork she tried to sell what few things she had. At one point, people even offered her money for her food stamps, which while tempting was ultimately illegal and so she declined. Sister Fatima took this state of affairs to some members in her local Muslim community and someone generously donated a computer for the sister’s studies. “When she got it she wept,” added Sister Fatima. At last check, she was taking 6 classes and was getting straight A’s.
But that real-life story is the exception.
More common is the following story. A young sister accepted Islam while she was in prison. She stayed in regular touch with Sister Fatima and was happy for any visitors she got. She also had an impending release date. When she got out the only place she knew where she could go was downtown DC. She met with no support network whatsoever. No one provided for her when she got out. She did not even have a place to stay. Before long, the streets gave her all she had ever known and all they had ever given her, which was much of the same. As Sister Fatima put it, “it was only a matter of time before she screwed up and she did.” And now she is back inside. When asked what the latest progress was with this sister, Sister Fatima adds, “she left Islam.”
Ultimately, this bad situation gets compounded by a prison system that is incredibly prejudiced against sisters. They receive harassment in the prison, verbal and sometimes physical abuse from guards. They are called terrorists repeatedly. One sister was even forced to undergo a psychological evaluation “to make sure that she had voluntarily become a Muslim, because that choice was seen as so unfathomable to the authorities there,” added Fatima. The same sister endured a guard bad mouthing her and her religion slamming a door on her which hit her in the head.
“We really need help here. My resources are stretched so thin and they are dwindling rapidly,” says Sister Fatima closing the conversation. “There are just a few people helping out right now, but it is erratic at best. We’re going to need a miracle to help these sisters. We’re going to need more people. And we’re going to need them now.”
Fatima Steffanof can be contacted at islamikids@yahoo.com. They are taking donations and are in desperate need of volunteers.
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