{"id":268,"date":"2007-10-29T16:52:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T16:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co.php"},"modified":"2007-10-29T16:52:23","modified_gmt":"2007-10-29T16:52:23","slug":"muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co","title":{"rendered":"Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press<\/strong><br \/>\nWashington &#8211; The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to bar a Muslim inmate from suing prison officials who allegedly confiscated two copies of his Quran and prayer rug.<br \/>\nThe inmate should be limited to filing an administrative complaint as thousands of other prisoners do every year for a variety of allegations, a Justice Department lawyer told the court.<br \/>\nThe government laid out its position regarding a lawsuit by convicted murderer Abdus-Shahid M.S. Ali, who says Muslim prisoners around the country are regularly mistreated by their jailers because of their religious faith.<br \/>\nChief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia expressed doubts over the inmate&#8217;s claim of having a right to sue, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer suggested they are skeptical of the government&#8217;s position.<br \/>\n&#8220;There is no court remedy?&#8221; asked Ginsburg.<br \/>\nNo, but under the administrative process, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has paid compensation for over a thousand inmate claims in the last three years, Assistant Solicitor General Kannon Shanmugam replied.<br \/>\nAli says the books and rug are among the personal items that have been missing since 2003, when he was moved from a federal penitentiary in Atlanta to a facility at Inez, Ky.<br \/>\nMuslim inmates have been subjected to &#8220;very hard times and bad treatment&#8221; at the hands of federal, state and local prison employees because of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ali says in court papers.<br \/>\nAli is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for committing first-degree murder in the District of Columbia.<br \/>\nIt seems as though &#8220;the many prison employees think that they can hurt you best taking your personally owned property,&#8221; Ali wrote.<br \/>\nAli added that because he has &#8220;practiced his faith to the fullest&#8221; he has been subjected to prison officials repeatedly confiscating and destroying his legal and religious property.<br \/>\nHe said he has been harassed for his religious beliefs &#8220;year after year&#8221; in both the District of Columbia Department of Corrections and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.<br \/>\nAli also argues that items he turned over to prison officers in Atlanta for shipment never arrived at Inez.<br \/>\nIn the Supreme Court, the question is whether federal prison officials qualify as law enforcement officers under the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946 and are therefore exempt from suit. The statute bars liability claims against customs and excise officers or &#8220;any other law enforcement officer&#8221; involved in detaining property. Two lower federal courts ruled against Ali.<br \/>\nBesides the two copies of the Quran and the prayer rug, Ali is missing stamps and other personal items worth $177 that he says weren&#8217;t sent along to Big Sandy penitentiary in Kentucky.<br \/>\nThe case is Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prison, 06-9130.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press Washington &#8211; The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to bar a Muslim inmate from suing prison officials who allegedly confiscated two copies of his Quran and prayer rug. The inmate should be limited to filing an administrative complaint as thousands of other prisoners do every year for a variety of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press Washington &#8211; The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to bar a Muslim inmate from suing prison officials who allegedly confiscated two copies of his Quran and prayer rug. The inmate should be limited to filing an administrative complaint as thousands of other prisoners do every year for a variety of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-29T16:52:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated","og_description":"Associated Press Washington &#8211; The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to bar a Muslim inmate from suing prison officials who allegedly confiscated two copies of his Quran and prayer rug. The inmate should be limited to filing an administrative complaint as thousands of other prisoners do every year for a variety of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-10-29T16:52:23+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co","name":"Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-29T16:52:23+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-29T16:52:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/10\/muslim-says-copies-of-quran-co#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Muslim Says Copies of Quran Confiscated"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}