Canada's Newest Ultra-Nationalist Group Plans Show of Force

SIMON COUTU
VICE
September 7, 2017

The men-only anti-immigrant group, known as the Northern Guard, plans to show its colours in a rally on September 30.

This story originally appeared on VICE Quebec.

The Northern Guard, a new conservative ultranationalist group, intends to protest against what they falsely call "illegal immigration" on September 30 in Lacolle, Quebec alongside the Storm Alliance, and in Ottawa, in front of the federal Parliament. Formed by a number of former members of Soldiers of Odin, this men-only group claims they want to "defend the country against its internal enemies."

I met two members of the Northern Guard at a tavern in Gatineau, Le Petit Canot, which also serves as a regular meeting place for the group. Nationally, they have about 300 members, according to the Facebook page of the group founded in June in Moncton by Nick Gallant, former provincial president of the Soldiers of Odin for New Brunswick.

Last spring, the anti-immigration group Soldiers of Odin (SOO) splintered, as the Quebec chapter left the national organization, saying they wanted to distance themselves from the racist positions of the founder of the group, Finland's Mika Ranta. From this schism was born Storm Alliance and The Northern Guard.

Brian Wallingford, a heavy machinery operator in Maniwaki and former provincial vice president of SOO, is a national recruiter for The Northern Guard. "In Finland, SOO is a group of skinheads," the 43-year-old man, arms covered with tattoos, told me. "We always ended up being treated as racists. So we founded a group with Canadian values. "

However, the group, like many other ultra right organizations such as the 3%ers, are vehemently anti-Islam and have rallied against the thousands of migrants, mostly Haitians, who have crossed the US border since early summer. On the group's Facebook page, there are countless links and comments that associate Islam with terrorism or predict the introduction of Sharia in the country.

The Northern Guard argues that Canada should simply close the door to any form of immigration until further notice. "There are too many," says Eric Brazeau, a resident of Aylmer who is the group's spokesperson for Quebec and Ontario. "We are not able to support our veterans and the homeless. We will not pay for the Haitians. In addition, many are criminals. If they do crimes in our community, we will be there to protect and educate our neighbors."

Last month, the RCMP claimed that less than one percent of migrants who crossed the border since November 2016 were detained because of a criminal record.

Brian Wallingford is currently the moderator of the Three Percent Quebec page , a group of armed anti-Islam "patriots." He hopes that the Northern Guard might adopt a similar approach. "I am pro-arms and I will not hide from it," he said. "If a person has to defend himself for his safety, I want him to be educated in the use of firearms. We want responsible people. If one day we have to defend our country, we must know how. "

Like American groups such as the Minutemen, an armed militia that "patrols" the border with Mexico (not to be confused with the 80s punk band), The Northern Guard would like to do the same to track down Haitians who want to enter Canada. "Our members are ready," said Brazeau. "But we respect the laws, so we will not do it if we are forbidden. "

Listening to both men, you would think North America is in danger of a civil war in the near future. And they want to be ready, with their few dozen members on Facebook.

"The Liberal government is in great collusion with [the Hungarian-American billionaire] George Soros and the Clintons," Éric Brazeau told me, citing a common far right conspiracy theory. "It is a plan that is destroying our free Canada. We are afraid of being Christians. If the government continues to flout our rights, it may be a civil war. Charlottesville, it's just the beginning. "

"We're a brotherhood . In SOO, when Katy Latulippe became president, people did not want to be led by a woman and that divided people. A man who runs a women's gang, or the opposite, does not work," Brazeau said.

The September 30 demonstration is the first official public appearance of The Northern Alliance, which has just embroidered the jackets in the colors of the group. Until now, members were limited to discussions through social networks or around a BBQ. But we expect more from them.

"We do not want keyboard warriors," says Wallingford. "I've seen it too much with SOO and La Meute. We want people to move to help. "

Follow Simon Coutu on Twitter.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/yww8ab/canadas-newest-ultra-nationalist-group-plans-show-of-force

'Everybody was kicking me': Alleged beating by Canadian man at D.C. protest leads to condemnation of Jewish Defence League

Stewart Bell
National Post
April 10, 2017


TORONTO — Videos showing men in Jewish Defence League shirts beating a Palestinian-American college instructor in Washington, D.C., have led to renewed criticism of the controversial group and its links to violence.

“Everybody was kicking me and punching me,” said Kamal Nayfeh, 55, who required 18 stitches around his eye following the March 26 assault. Among those arrested was a Toronto man affiliated with the JDL’s Canadian branch.

Police have filed an assault charge against Yosef Steynovitz, whom JDL leader Meir Weinstein described as “a gentleman who comes to a variety of JDL activities.” The police report called it a suspected hate crime motivated by anti-Arab bias.

The incident, which took place outside a conference on American-Israeli relations, comes amid concerns about the Toronto-based JDL Canada’s associations with an increasingly vocal anti-Muslim alliance.

In recent months, JDL members have provided security to Sandra Solomon, the national spokeswoman for Rise Canada, which describes Muslims on its Twitter account as “rotten from the time they drop from the womb” and supports their mass deportation.

Photos taken in Toronto at a demonstration against a Liberal MP’s anti-Islamophobia motion, M-103, show a man in a JDL Canada jacket with his arm around someone wearing a jacket bearing the logo of the Soldiers of Odin group, which calls Islam a “totalitarian ideology” on its Facebook page.

Also, last month at a meeting of groups opposed to Muslim prayers in the Toronto-area Peel District School Board, Rise Canada adviser Ron Banarjee said the groups “have allegiances, we have contacts with different groups like the Jewish Defence League of Canada.”

The beating of Nayfeh, who described the incident in an interview as an unprovoked hate crime, has brought renewed condemnation of the JDL, which formed almost 50 years ago to patrol Jewish neighbourhoods in New York City during a period of racial tensions.

“The JDL began in the ’60s with all good intentions of wanting to protect Jews,” said Bernie Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress and now executive director of the Mosaic Institute, a charity that promotes diversity.

“They’ve turned a dark corner over the last five years to a point where they have now made common cause with racists and bigots and they themselves appear to have embraced racism and bigotry.”

In an April 2 statement, Weinstein, the international director of the JDL, responded to what he called the defamation of the group since the attack on Nayfeh and said “selectively spliced videos” on the Internet didn’t tell the whole story.

Weinstein said he regretted that violence had occurred but claimed the attack was sparked when Nayfeh came “to assault” Rise Canada’s Solomon, who was demonstrating with the JDL crowd outside the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference.

Nayfeh, who teaches networking technology at a North Carolina community college, told the National Post the suggestion he was to blame was laughable. He said he was dropping off his daughter, a law student, at the event when he decided to make sure it was safe for her.

He said he approached Solomon because she was saying there was no such thing as Palestine and he wanted to correct her because he was himself a Palestinian. But when he neared her, the JDL group began to push and hit him, he said.

“A lot of punches, a lot of hitting and then I fell down to the ground,” he said. Videos show men in JDL shirts kicking him while he was down and a man jabbing him with a flagpole bearing the American flag.

Police officers moved in quickly to break it up but Nayfeh’s face was cut and bloodied and he said his back was hurt. “They were there to make trouble,” Nayfeh said of the JDL. The day before the attack, he added, he had visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The JDL has been both a victim and perpetrator of violence for many years. In 1990, its founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was assassinated by an Egyptian-born extremist. Four years later, a JDL member murdered 29 Palestinians at a Hebron mosque.

The chairman of the JDL, Montreal-born Irv Rubin, was arrested in 2001 for allegedly plotting to bomb a mosque in Culver City, Calif., as well as the office of an Arab-American congressman. He committed suicide in prison.

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the JDL “a radical organization that preaches a violent form of anti-Arab, Jewish nationalism” and is responsible for “countless terrorist attacks” as well as “intense harassment” of Muslims, Jewish scholars and community leaders.

The group currently has branches in Canada, Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and Russia, the SPLC says. In a Passover message on Sunday, Weinstein said that in the past month the JDL had “made a positive difference” in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, New York City, Washington, Chicago, Poland and France.

The JDL was looking to expand into other centres, he said in his April 2 statement. “We want the JDL back, and people want the JDL back,” he wrote. “It’s time to not let Jews be intimidated any longer or assaulted any longer. This should be the challenge for us now, to turn a corner.”

The JDL Canada website argues that Jews today are in a war of survival worse than during the Nazi era and laments a Jewish leadership too blinded to see it. Recently, the JDL called an emergency meeting over videos filmed at mosques in Toronto and Montreal, in which violence against Jews was preached from the pulpit.

A March 16 JDL email about “disturbing reports of radical Islam entering the pubic school system” included a link to the Freedom Report, which has been condemned for offering a reward to a student who films “Islamic hate speech” inside a Peel school. The school board has called the reward “hate-filled showmanship.”

A photo of a car with a “JDL Patrol” logo on the door was distributed by the group on March 21. “Anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish communities have increased dramatically, and therefore JDL security patrols have begun,” it said.

Asked about the JDL’s recent activities, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs spokesman Martin Sampson said the community rejected violence. “The approach adopted by the JDL is not reflective of the mainstream Canadian Jewish community.”

The National Council of Canadian Muslims said it expected police to maintain the peace. “Should any individual or group promote hate or violence, we expect the authorities to bring them to justice,” spokeswoman Amira Elghawaby said.

In an interview, Weinstein said he opposed violence and complained that those who raised their voices against the threat of Islamist extremism were automatically branded fascist and white supremacist.

He said Solomon had asked the JDL to provide security for her at the event in Toronto because of death threats she had received. He said he wasn’t completely familiar with the Soldiers of Odin but said “the ones I’ve spoken to, they made it very clear to me that they’re not racist.”

As for the assault at the AIPAC conference two weeks ago, he said he and a JDL contingent had gone there “to have a counter-protest against the anti-Israel protests that seem to have been a tradition there.”

He said anti-Israeli protesters had been committing assaults throughout the day because police failed to keep the sides apart. Weinstein said he himself was assaulted. “We didn’t go there with any pre-meditated thinking to do any violence,” he said. “But violence broke out and the person whose picture is going around who was the victim, he’s not so innocent, that’ll come out.”

But Nayfeh said he believed he walked into a trap that day and that what he suffered was a hate crime. “Absolutely, there is no other reason, you know, why would they attack me. I haven’t spoken a word to them other than saying to the woman ‘I am Palestinian,’ or ‘I am Palestine’ and then the other word that I said was ‘Don’t touch me.’ And then I deserved to be beaten like that maliciously with a flag pole into my eye?”

• Email: sbell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @StewartBellNP



http://news.nationalpost.com/news/everybody-was-kicking-me-alleged-beating-by-canadian-man-at-d-c-protest-leads-to-condemnation-of-jewish-defence-league

Soldiers of Odin splinter in Canada over 'racist agenda' of far-right group's leadership in Finland

Stewart Bell
National post
May 1, 2017

TORONTO — The far-right group Soldiers of Odin has splintered in Canada after the two main factions turned against each other in a dispute over whether to remain aligned with their racist namesake in northern Europe.

The split began last week when the president of Soldiers of Odin Canada, Bill Daniels, denounced the “racist agenda” of Soldiers of Odin leaders in Finland and said his branch was no longer associated with them.

“Their ridiculous belief in racism has always been a huge issue for us in Canada as we do not support or share their views on race,” Daniels said on Facebook, calling the Finnish leaders “racist, unorganized, reckless” thugs.

The Finnish leaders of the anti-immigrant group responded by expelling Daniels and banning him from using the name Soldiers of Odin. The Quebec branch then said it was also splitting away from the Daniels wing.

“There is indeed a disconnect between SOO Quebec and SOO Canada,” said the Quebec chapter president, Katy Latulippe. “As the provincial president, and with a unanimous vote, we decided that Quebec would dissociate Canada.”

The Daniels faction “will no longer be allowed to wear the colors of the Soldiers of Odin,” she said. “It is important to know that more than 50% of the divisions in Canada do not agree with Bill Daniels and also wishes to continue their activities under the banner of the SOO.”

The Soldiers of Odin emerged in Finland in 2015 as an anti-immigration group closely aligned with the racist far right. It spread quickly to Europe and North America but since arriving in Canada a year ago it has struggled with its identity.

While the Canadian chapters have emphasized their community volunteerism, organizing events such as food drives, they have also clashed with anti-racism demonstrators, and posted blatantly anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media.

“It is an important group and it is growing tremendously,” said Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, a Canadian researcher at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews.

Working with Emil Archambault of Durham University, Veilleux-Lepage has identified 265 Canadians associated with the Soldiers of Odin. An analysis of their Facebook linkages showed a close connection between the Canadian members and their Finnish and Swedish counterparts, he said.

“What that tells us is that members of the Canadian group are quite interlinked with at least the membership of the Finnish group,” Veilleux-Lepage said in an interview.

That means that while the Canadian groups claim to be distinct from their racist Finnish namesake, they interact with them online and share the same anti-immigrant narratives, Veilleux-Lepage said.

The research results undermine the significance of the split between the Canadian and Finnish Soldiers of Odin over racism, he said. “The idea of Soldiers of Odin as a multicultural group, it’s not the reality we’re seeing.”

Soldiers of Odin Canada declined to comment on the study. A Facebook post by the group’s spokesman, Mike Montague, suggests the dispute is at least partly over money. He wrote that the Finland group wanted to collect an annual fee from each member.

“As for Quebec SOO they have decided to denounce us and continue working with Finland even though the rest of Canada SOO is running independent from Finland SOO,” the group told the National Post. “As far as we are concerned the Quebec SOO has gone rogue from SOO Canada’s national leadership.”

Although the Canadian offshoot insists it is not racist, its Facebook page calls Islam a “totalitarian ideology” and speaks of a war “with all of Islam.” The page also supports Sandra Solomon, the former spokeswoman for the Toronto-based anti-Muslim group Rise Canada.

The study, which has not yet been published, raised concerns about the growth of Soldiers of Odin, given its anti-Muslim, anti-immigration rhetoric and the apparent overlap of its membership with supporters of outlaw biker gangs like the Hells Angels.

Veilleux-Lepage said there had always been an ideological gulf between the Canadian and Quebec factions, with the latter being more anti-immigration. But he said ultimately the current split might not mean much. “We don’t think it’s that clear of a breakup.”

National Post
sbell@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/StewartBellNP


http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/soldiers-of-odin-splinter-in-canada-over-racist-agenda-of-far-right-groups-leadership-in-finland

Fear and loathing on the streets: the Soldiers of Odin and the rise of anti-refugee vigilantes

Far right groups are gaining a global foothold because they echo mainstream discourse which has shrunk the political horizon to issues of border paranoia, terror, and security

The Guardian

Jason Wilson

Friday 28 October 2016 

·         In 2016, hate travels fast. News that the Soldiers of Odin were conducting vigilante patrols in Melbourne’s CBD coincided with reports of renewed activity by the group in Canada, a widening presence in the United States, as well as ongoing incidents at their point of origin, in Europe.

The group was founded in Finland in late 2015 by Mika Ranta, who has a long history as a white supremacist activist. Members of the group in Finland are allegedly responsible for the murder of a young anti-racist activist. This year the group has exploded, in Europe and internationally. It’s growth in the United States has been so rapid that the Anti Defamation League was moved to issue a special report on the group, which it described as an “anti-refugee vigilante group”.

The ADL noted that the group had thousands of Facebook supporters, an increasing presence on the streets throughout the country, and had been instrumental in activism opposed to the settlement of refugees in states like Montana.

The central idea the Soldiers push is an association between Muslims – both refugees and immigrants – and crime. Alexander Reid Ross, a US-based anti-fascist researcher and author of the upcoming book, Against the Fascist Creep, says they are part of a “radicalisation of the right that is grounded in the reaction to the spectre of ‘refugees’ and ‘immigrants’.”

Their offer of protection is explicitly pitched at white fears about Arabs and other migrant groups. Their name and iconography refer directly to Norse mythology, which they interpret in racial terms. As Reid Ross puts it, “they explicitly present themselves as preservers and defenders of the white race in spiritual terms”.

In this context, one thing that sets them apart from other groups is their street patrols – an idea they’ve brought to Melbourne. Alan Dutton works for the Canadian Anti-racism Education and Research Society (CAERS). He says that in that country, patrols are one way that the Soldiers are “trying to appear to support civil responsibility. But that seems to be a strategy to gain social license to raise money and recruit members”.

He added that while the Soldiers discourage open, public racism in their online communities, and try to disavow the unapologetic white supremacism of European chapters, they “have been unable to explain why, if they disavow racist violence, they assume the name of a racist and violent group”.

The same question could be asked of the Melbourne chapter, which similarly plays down the racist associations of their name and group. Indeed, the Age’s reporting on the group has been criticised in some quarters for similarly backgrounding the group’s far right associations.

Kieran Bennett, an Australian political blogger and antifascist researcher, faulted the Age for not seeing that the Soldiers “are implementing a tried and tested racist strategy”. Like many far right groups, they offer security that they say the state has failed to provide.

“Fascist rhetoric centres around the idea that the state has failed the ‘nation’ in some way … they are purporting to react to this failure.”

In the US context, Reid Ross says that “they thrive off the anti-government movement, and its attempts at replacing the federal government with localised systems of right-wing, sovereign power”, and there is a lot of crossover with so-called patriot groups and other right wing militia.

In Melbourne, some of the members of the Soldiers of Odin have been drifting around the far right for a while. Long standing blogger and researcher on the far right in Australia, Andy Fleming, says the Soldiers’ leader, Jay B Moore (who featured in the Age’s report), was previously a member of the Patriots Defence League of Australia.

“They’re drawn from an already-existing milieu,” he says, “and you could argue for some of them it’s a rebadging – they’ve taken off they’re PDLA gear and put on Soldiers of Odin gear instead.”

Given that the PDLA was itself a splinter group from the Australian Defence League, and that he estimates that the Soldiers in Melbourne number no more than 20, they need to be understood in the context of the fractious history of the far right.

So far they have attended far right rallies and intermittently clashed with other far right groups like the True Blue Crew. According to their Facebook page, they are planning to attend the “Battle of Eltham” rally this weekend, where a number of far right groups will be protesting the decision to re-settle Syrian and Iraqi refugees in St Vincent’s care facility in Eltham, in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne.

Their numbers may be small in Australia so far and that may, in part, indicate a fragmentation of the local far right. The uptake of Odinist branding may be a matter of convenience – window dressing for personality conflicts in a movement stacked with big egos.

But what’s undeniable is that the common currency of international far right groups is Islamophobia, and that social media allows far right activists to make common cause across national boundaries.

If such groups are gaining more of a foothold throughout advanced democracies, it may be because they echo mainstream political discourse, which for a generation has shrunk the political horizon to issues of border paranoia, terror, and security.

The best way to defeat them, long term, will be to build real alternatives to the politics of fear and resentment. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/28/fear-and-loathing-on-the-streets-the-soldiers-of-odin-and-the-rise-of-anti-refugee-vigilantes

 

 

 

How fringe religions find followers behind bars

By Daniel Genis
Washington Post
Chicago Tribune
February 10, 2015

Fringe religions are busy in prisons, where education levels are low and wishful thinking is high

Wiccans, Druids, Satanists and Zen Buddhists. Welcome to the world of prison evangelism.

When I entered New York state’s prison system in 2004 to serve 10 years, I was shaved, given a number and told to check the box next to my religion. Prison guards handed me a long list of faiths: In addition to the regulars, there were Odinism, Rastafarianism and the Nation of Gods and Earths. (The latter was once considered a gang, but years of lawsuits had turned it into a viable religious option.) Had I been honest, I would have checked the box next to “atheist.” Instead, I marked “Jewish,” reflecting my father’s heritage.

My motivation wasn’t the access to kosher meals or a desire to belong to a clan in prison, though both drive convicts’ religious affiliations behind bars. I opted in because I wanted to work for rabbis, a job that would put me in the company of educated thinkers whom I could relate to during the lonely decade I had stretching before me. Ultimately, it did more than that. It showed me the dishonest ways religion is spread in prison. The evangelists I saw used prisoners’ desperation to add to their faiths’ numbers.

The first thing I noticed after beginning my sentence for five counts of armed robbery, a consequence of heroin addiction, was how many faiths were represented. During my decade behind bars, I met thousands of prisoners in 12 of New York’s joints, both maximum- and medium-security. I spoke with agents of Opus Dei, Fez-wearing Moorish Science Temple members, a few Druids and a surprisingly nice Satanist. I encountered Wiccans (warlocks, never witches), Odinists (worshipers of the Norse pantheon and almost exclusively white supremacists, though one Colombian was brought in), Nation of Islam men in bow ties (Louis Farrakhan’s Muslims), Hebrew Israelites (black Jews), Zen Buddhists (meditation pushers), one Sikh (a Kashmiri cabbie who killed his passenger but fed me curry) and one Jedi (charming fellow, heinous murder). No one but me believed in nothing.

One reason a thousand flowers have bloomed is that the evangelism typical of mainstream faiths such as Catholicism and Protestantism has spread to newer players who place a greater value on the souls of convicts. At most, there are 20,000 followers of the pagan religion Asatru, sometimes referred to as Odinism, in the United States, while Catholics number 78.2 million. Hardly any Catholic missionaries came to the 12 facilities where I was housed, but I saw many evangelists from outsider faiths visit. Winning one new convert to a tiny corps is far more significant than winning 10 new converts to a horde.

Judaism and Islam also have their fringes, and I saw the same trend among them. A nontraditional Jewish sect that argues the messiah has already come courted my allegiance in a way the establishment did not. And the Nation of Islam tried harder with my neighbors than regular Sunni Islam did. These groups offer personal attention and loyalty (scarce resources in prison) from support networks that clergy of the established religions, especially those employed by the state prison system, cannot provide.

The incarcerated world is one where leaps of faith are taken with ease. The educational level is low (nationwide, 68 percent of state prisoners don’t have a high school diploma) and wishful thinking high. Jailhouse “common knowledge” holds that ghosts are real and the moon landing was not. I knew men who couldn’t identify the actors of World War II but were familiar with the sins of the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, clans that are alleged to secretly control the world. Convicts who quit school in the fifth grade cited the Merovingian dynasty to demonstrate that Jimmy Hoffa simply had to go. (It’s said he learned that unions are run by Masons and became a liability. He knew too much.) In prison, where hope is limited, people are looking for answers, even wrong ones.

Religions often depend on the vulnerable to grow their numbers. Jehovah’s Witnesses are willing to drive for hours to do a Bible study with a convict, even if their doctrine promises only 144,000 slots in heaven. (This belief is not emphasized in their prison pamphlets.) The visiting rooms are where the shepherds meet their flocks and the faithful ply their craft. I saw Franciscan monks visit one incarcerated brother, carrying lox, pomegranates and pricey Latin texts, despite his conviction for child abuse. They believed his victims lied because he said they did, all three times.

There are two approaches to jailhouse religion: There are clergy hired by the state — Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Sunni imams and Orthodox rabbis. The fringe groups have their own leaders, who work outside of the prison bureaucracy, winning converts by bucking the establishment.

During my time, I clerked for several state-hired rabbis; all but one were Orthodox. Part of my job was to work with the Jewish program Reaching Out, which issues a newsletter and provides support to incarcerated Jews. Its leader, Rabbi Shmuel Spritzer, comes from a fringe sect of Lubavitcher Hasids who think the messiah was Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a charismatic rabbi who died in 1994. (They say he is simply concealed for now and will re-emergereemerge soon.)

In theory, the chaplains are in the prisons to minister to the men, but in practice, they are colleagues of their oppressors. When they work for the state, they can’t really take an inmate’s side in a dispute, no matter how right he is. But religious counselors such as Spritzer can and do. In a prison where talking in the halls was forbidden, I once got locked up for breaking that rule. I had answered a question that the state-hired rabbi asked in passing. At the disciplinary hearing, did he save me? No. But Spritzer did, by calling the warden, who reversed the charge. Perhaps he valued my soul more. And he, not the rabbi of the state, was the one sending clothes to cold Jews and food to hungry ones.

After reading the Bible, visiting the Western Wall in Israel and seeing the pope at the Vatican, I became an atheist at 16. By 20, I was a militant one. But there are no atheists in trenches, it’s said. That goes for prison too: Nationally, only 0.07 percent of convicts who declare a religious preference say they do not believe in God. Inmates use faith to build support groups, find work or just get kosher meals — things they need. But I witnessed too many unanswered prayers by inmates (on matters from football games to parole boards) to shake my godlessness.

I did once betray my atheist beliefs. The night before I was to be sentenced in 2003, I prayed, not knowing how or to whom, to keep two years of my life (the judge’s sentence would commit me either to 10 years or to eight). I begged a nondescript divine being that the judge would impose the minimum. I broke with my conviction.

Today I shudder at my cowardice. I wish I had held firm to my atheism, especially since my prayers weren’t answered (I got the maximum). And over that time, I saw how shallow belief ran: Inmates changed their religions so often that the state imposed a limit of one change per year. The abundance of faith and choice created too much paperwork.

But my atheism stayed consistent. Even a decade of Rabbi Spritzer’s kindness to me in prison could not change that.

Washington Post

Daniel Genis is a writer in Brooklyn.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/chi-prison-religion-satanists-jehovahs-witness-20150209-story.html#page=1