ABSTRACT
Prisons are proportionally more numerous today than during the Middle Ages, and detain people for longer periods. Statistical projections suggest that the prison population may reach 96,000 in the United Kingdom by 2014, which means an increase of 18 per cent. The ideology of tawhid is the result, in this case, of prison dynamics rather than indoctrination or reading material. Indeed, the great majority of those of my respondents who adhered to the ideology of tawhid had never read ibn Taymiyah, Sayyid Qutb or similar authors. Some of the processes, such as faith, ideology and fear, are inevitable in prison – and not just in the case of Muslim prisoners – but they can be understood and managed in a positive way. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
