# Two to three months in prison: learning, poetry and the humanity of inmates

- URL: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/1zghntbmpis/s/36/
- Date: 2021-01-12 · Kind: other · Transcript tier: machine · Recording: Monday Nights with Mufti #197 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth (2:38:30–2:48:51)
- Watch from the start of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zgHntbMPis&t=9510s
- Recording page: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/1zghntbmpis/

**Topics:** Personal stories and reflections

**Summary (not a quotation; machine-made, unchecked):** A personal story: prison was bearable, even fruitful, and he found a humane side in feared inmates.

## Longer summary

Mufti Abu Layth says the prison time itself worked out for him. He explains that the case arose from his trying to help a friend arrange mediation in a family matter by asking an officer for help, that the officer was later investigated for unrelated matters, and that he and his friend were made examples of when he declined to act as a witness. He says he and his co-defendant were unusually kept together throughout the two to three months, that he kept to himself, read hadith commentary and learned the Hindi script, and that not smoking kept him out of trouble. He describes befriending a feared inmate through a shared love of poetry and another notorious inmate who treated him with respect, and reflects that many people caught up in crime have a very humane side.

## Transcript (machine tier, 2:38:30–2:48:51)

[2:37:51] left a kind of imprint on my psyche definitely and but i mean like many things look in life you come back stronger and i i must say lila many great things came out of that not directly but as a consequence many greater opportunities for work and things like this came out of it obviously necessity is the mother of invention you know you got to think out the box and you try certain things and they you know and you get involved in this and that and it works but yeah that was definitely a very uh shocking experience and even that the

[2:38:30] prison thing as well i mean it was the prison to be fair kind of really worked out for me [Laughter] not because you know my uh cody my my friend uh partner in crime [Laughter] he so he was a friend of mine not the um because it was allegedly because the whole incident was really it was an innocent incident i was just simply trying to arrange a mediation for his family um the copper that i had asked that could you provide any help

[2:39:08] from the from the authorities um it was a family it was a domestic issue that there was no domestic violence or anything but it was a domestic dispute as in his wife had left him but that wasn't the issues more the issue of children and and he was trying to arrange some kind of mediation but the problem with solicitors is they can only do it if they have an address to write to so we had no address and you know he was going through depression and i was just trying to arrange some kind of helpful mediation what i didn't know was the kappa was under surveillance now he kind of was being so he was involved in all kinds of stuff nothing to do with this he was involved

[2:39:46] in drugs and all kinds of things and being under surveillance a year later he gets picked up then they pick up everybody that's ever messaged him they pick me up i unfortunately not knowing the kind of [ __ ] storm that's behind all of these because they don't tell me they just asked me did you send this guy a message asking for this one and a half years ago and i kind of like what are you talking about about brushed it off even the solicitor just brushed it off as this is nothing they came down so heavy we had no idea where they were coming from and then we realized oh it's actually to make an example of the copper but they wanted me to be a witness for them

[2:40:25] now because i wasn't prepared to be a witness they were saying if you admit to this copper admitted to doing wrong by agreeing to help you now i was like but why is that wrong so they kind of like wrong number right door number next door [Laughter] the vaseline so they they were like a cha so they basically made an example of me and other people whoever it wasn't just me there were other people and my friend who i was asking on behalf of they made an example out of him as

[2:41:05] well i mean they just added us all on to kind of get him but he and me right throughout our prison time we were together all the time now this was actually quite unprecedented as far as prisons go you're not usually allowed to be padded up with your kodi co-defendant but it's amazing you know how allah works in our case it obviously the first night you can understand okay they put us together but they usually split co-defendants and we remain together the entire i mean it wasn't that long it was just two to three months but

[2:41:44] we remained together that entire time entire time and and he actually blindly if you're watching this i love you yeah so he he had some experience already and so that helped massively he had some experience with the [Music] with the prison he knew people he had some relatives in there and that really kind of helped and it was i mean i kind of kept myself to myself i just used it as a time to learn i started to re i was reading i was reading they allowed me to take in some books i was reading a certain hadith commentary book and reading some

[2:42:22] other books i took the time to learn hindi uh i mean i speak urdu anyway but um hindi script i started learning that so i learned that whilst in prison i you know and it was overall a very fascinating experience so alhamdulillah i definitely um kind of like it's not pleasant to get into but i suppose once you come out of it you're kind of like wow you know you meet people all kind of walks of life and i wonder how they are actually you know there was a guy in there who was uh a real kind of like in this particular

[2:43:00] um wing he kind of like run the or house block whatever he kind of run the show and he was a muslim and there weren't many muslims there and when i was there i wasn't i was told oh don't tell everybody you're a mufti and so i don't know why but anyway so initially in the first month i didn't so i just keep myself to myself but i did used to just sit outside sometimes i would read my books people could see that and you know i don't i don't smoke so if you don't smoke you're already 90 out of trouble like you know people ain't interested

[2:43:38] if you smoke there's that is that where you kind of get sucked into a world of problems because you need cigarettes and you need stuff and all that kind of so with me there wasn't that and there was this guy we used to i mean his name was baba i i don't know where he is now but i hope inshallah he's safe and sound but he kind of ran that thing and um yeah and he he this guy muslim local from birmingham i mean i'd never known of him before but he was quite notorious inside like he had a huge fear factor about him

[2:44:16] uh but i didn't know who he was and he didn't know initially i was a musti but he knew i was into poetry and he had this great i gotta say the guy was so into shairi poetry it was amazing and he knew his uh and he had his own poems and um so we kind of got into a proper chit-chat and i used to proper kind of like chill like oh yeah talk say a poem say this say that we were um and that was uh you know so there was some very interesting fond memories you have people you get to know different walks of life how you know how

[2:44:55] they the kind of world how it works but yeah interesting and sometimes you just um you know you you treat people how you see them and it's it's interesting you know there was this one guy in one of our house blogs and this guy was this i mean he was involved in some serious serious next level uh organized oh sorry sorry potentially involved and eastern european but he was muslim yeah

[2:45:33] and i you see he kind of when i used to come and sit out at the table he would sit there with his friend and he was this big and she don't want those thick [Music] kind of guys proper neck out there and and i just you know like to his friend i didn't know he was muslim but to his friend i i recognized he was muslim he had a hat on one so i said salaam alaikum you know and what's your name and oh and this and so they told me oh you know and he said so i said to him oh are you muslim so he tells me his muslim name he has a different name by the way that everybody

[2:46:12] had an eastern european name which everybody knows him by i just knew him as as ali and so and i i don't realize i didn't know he was like this top but i used to just kind of i used to proper just chat like oh yeah so what's going on ellie i had no idea this guy was notorious and ruthless honestly i and and because of maybe just the way i used to chat to him because i just i didn't know who he was i just thought he's a regular kind of guy um he used to proper be like on a level with me proper safe and he

[2:46:52] started chatting to me it's one time asking me oh what do you think about this if this happened that happened blah blah blah blah blah but i realized how much people feared him afterwards like this event happened once where he had this outburst and the entire block was in pin drop silence like nobody would do kind of even look at this guy and i remember once he was fuming he comes up to this gate they've locked again he slams and this guy's a beast of a man and they open and he's he's mad because he you know there was some legal complications going on

[2:47:31] and he just walks from everybody's crap in it and he just kind of walks to me and just kind of shakes my hand and i just like obviously with me he was because i was just maybe treating him prior to that just normal but yeah but it was a very interesting experience i thought i'd share that since you asked i don't know how these people are doing now you know may allah have mercy on all of these you know it's interesting you do see a very it's surprising because nobody is i mean maybe some people in the world are evil but you know a lot of people they have a

[2:48:11] very humane side to them but they kind of got caught up in in a lot of bad you know bad crap they got caught up in it's hard you know may allah make things easy for everyone i mean i mean yeah but yeah so that's been some i thought i'd share that mella make it easy we'll share some other stories another time people so uh moving on right i'd a quick one i had been asked about um

[2:48:50] i'd been asked on where's my phone by miss patrioncitos uh right now this is not the one this one we've already taken a look at but all right let me just bring this bring up my the patreon questions can't have you guys looking at my pen

## Cite

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 1zgHntbMPis/s/36. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/1zghntbmpis/s/36/

Not a fatwa: these answers were given to specific people at specific times. Ask a qualified scholar about your own situation.