Another Code of Honor for Young Gangsters to Dedicate Themselves To Following
Story by Christopher Patrick Nelson

If you get a classroom full of youth who are “at risk” for involvement in gang violence, you can use the usual intervention strategy and fail. This strategy consists of telling these young people how gangs are bad and then having them repeat it back to you. What this plan of attack leaves out of its calculation is all the reasons teenage adults love gangs like nothing else. Adolescents are willing to die for this thing – because of all the good inherent to it.   Being a gangster means you live by a strict code that tells you what to do and what not to do. Not only are you somebody, but you know exactly who that somebody is. Being a gangster also means that there are thousands of others like you involved in a struggle larger than yourself. These are beautiful things. You can never take away anything from people without giving them something to take its place. This is especially true of things which are needs – like meaning in life. To my mind, nothing can supply the benefits of the gangster lifestyle and leave out its rape-and-murder side-effects except the Code of Islam, or Shariah.

The obvious objection to the idea of offering the Shariah to students on the verge of getting jumped into their neighborhood set is that they already have a religion, whether that be Prostestant Christianity or Catholicism. The Last Muslim Scripture, the Koran, forbids disrespecting other people's gods, especially the Prophet Jesus, peace be on him, whom Muslims accept as the Messiah, or the Prophetess Mary, who Muslims say was the highest of all women. (Peace be upon her.) However, Christianity and Catholism, apart from worship rituals, have no day-to-day code.   This is because they teach that God's Law to Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, no longer applies now that the Prophet Jesus has come, peace be upon him. “The Law was nailed to the Cross,” says the Bible in the New Testament. With all due respect, adolescents seek out guidance in their day-to-day life, and gangs provide that, although with rape and murder as well. The Shariah, or Code of Islam, instructs on how to grow and groom one's hair, how to go to the bathroom and how to clean up afterwards, how to satisfy one's spouse around the house and in bed, what to do when one gets sick, what positions to sleep in, what to do with free time, how to be a manly, how to feminine, and much more. To put it simply, it gives teenagers craving complete instructions and identity exactly that. “We are this because we do that.”

All their life, African-American, Latino, and ghetto-Irish adolescents have experienced disrespect – from systematically racist cops, from rich-kid loving principles, from their mother's latest abusive boyfriend, rapist jocks, fathers who abandon their children, and lots of others. Any code they respect enough to embrace must demand respect for its followers. This is where the Shariah, or the Code of Islam excels. Many of the young gangsters and wannabe's have uncles and other relatives in prison, and they will be able to tell of the Muslims they were locked up with. The inmates who embrace Islam do turn their lives around – they stop doing (or dealing) drugs or alcohol, they don't sexually assault their cellmates, and many times they get released for good behavior. Nobody has a problem with the Muslims. Like “the Cristianos” they are seen as walking a sacred path, but unlike the Cristianos if you hurt one of theirs they will war on you like an army. So, in prison terms, the Muslims get respect.

In the Koran, Allah says, “There can be no compulsion in religion; right has been made distinct from error.” If gang-intervention workshops asked kids all the good things they got out of gangs, and then offered learning about the Muslim Code of Shariah as an alternative to getting preached at, you can bet those kids would at least be curious. However, any kids who didn't like it or whose parents objected could take the regular, boring, gangs-are-bad-right? course. God knows best, but I think most students will choose the Islam option. Plus, this is not a cult – most of the do's and don'ts of the Code of Shariah are not mandatory, and new Muslims are advised to take it ... very ... slowly.

If you disagree with this idea, ask yourself if you know of any other complete code that tells you how to go to the bathroom and everything else. If we don't know of any such code, then how can we criticize the Red-and-Blue religion without offering an alternative?

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