ABSTRACT
Most importantly, in fighting for the right to assemble, the Nation of Islam (NOI) played a key role in preserving the crescent moon and disassembling the carceral state. Numerous scholars have taken up the Nation of Islam and its complex relationship to the law. In the United States, carceral encounters were also crucial in shaping white American ideas about political ideology, economic inequality, and religious identity. Most readers are unfamiliar with several key cases and the carceral environment beginning in the 1940s that outlined the NOI's contested strategy to gain religious recognition and the right to assemble in prisons. In 1991, the Hobbs v. Pennell case came to a close when a jury decided that although adherents to the Nation of Islam did have the right to assemble as a religious body; correctional institutions could require an outside imam to officiate the services.
