Sajad Shakur brings hope and halal food to California prisoners. fork the system

Visiting the mosque was not the only thing on Shakur’s mind after regaining his freedom.

Like many formerly incarcerated people re-entering society, he had a long list of needs, many of which were complicated by his status as a felon: securing housing, meeting loved ones. , finding work.

He fared better than most by getting a job at a Bay Area Middle Eastern restaurant called Falafel Corner several weeks after his release. The skills he had acquired in his cell and with makeshift hot plates in the prison kitchen were now put to use in building a new career, and he soon moved into restaurant management.

In 2016, the restaurant opened a second location in Sacramento, and in 2018, Shakur bought out the former owner. He says the business now has more than 30 franchises around Northern California.

If cooking was one skill Shakur continued to develop after leaving prison, his interest in criminal justice reform work was another skill he developed.

In 2014, Shakur, who earned a degree remotely from Ohio University while in prison, testified in the state Senate in support of SB 1391, which expanded access to college education for people incarcerated in California prisons. The bill was passed and signed into law in September 2014.

In 2023, he also became a vocal supporter of SB 309, which created universal standards applying to religious grooming and headwear in California detention facilities.

He recalled his experiences of persecution for expression of religious devotion behind bars, recalling an incident in 2002 when he was imprisoned for seven days for refusing to remove the Chitrali cap that was central to his identity as a Muslim of Pakistani heritage. Was sent to solitary confinement.

But perhaps his favorite type of activism has come in the form of sharing meals and worshiping with fellow Muslims in prisons across the state, a practice he began in 2017.

He says he usually makes such trips about five times per year, sometimes as many as 10. This is no small task, requiring hours of cooking and the even more difficult process of dealing with the exhausting bureaucracy of the prison system.

But Shakur sees these events as a source of fellowship and optimism for prisoners in a situation that can otherwise feel oppressively hopeless.

During his time in San Quentin, when he still believed he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, he remembered being enamored by a pair of flowers that had managed to grow from a cliff of inaccessible rock.

“We can’t always change our environment, just like the flower couldn’t change,” he says. “But we can learn to rise above the things that hold us down and use our environment to help us grow.” Can do.”

In a room decorated with colorful graffiti in Solano, Kali, a 69-year-old man savoring his burrito, tells Shakur, whom he has known since they were both incarcerated at Pleasant Valley State Prison, about his sense of purpose and peace. Talks. Found through Islam.

He first converted in 1992 while in solitary confinement, where he took a “moral inventory” of himself by diving into the Bible and the Quran.

For many people sentenced to life in prison, religion provides a means of resisting, if not entirely escaping, the pressures of despair that come with a life in prison forever.

The physical proximity of the free world, often visible just beyond the window or concertina fence, only enhances the alluring sense of closed possibility. In such circumstances, it seems miraculous that sources of warmth, creativity, and fellowship emerge.

It’s a feeling Shakur understands deeply, and Kali says he now helps others live with it by leading anger management classes at Solano.

He quotes his favorite line from the Quran: “Verily, with difficulty, also comes ease.”