Mariame Kaba is synonymous with the modern-day abolitionist movement. Her writings and organizing have been instrumental to many people learning about and joining causes to end policing, prisons, and surveillance as they exist in our society. Despite her commitment to very public abolitionist struggles, Kaba is a very private person. She famously does not take photos or appear on video. For this interview, we’re both on Zoom but I can only see her black square as I listen to her voice. “I really don’t talk about myself that much. I talk about my work that I’m doing,” she tells me. This hesitancy is rooted in her everyday practice to embody her values and faith through her actions and not through her words.
Kaba was born and raised in New York City to devout Muslim parents. “I come from a huge family: the Kabas and the Kebes. We are very entrenched in the Muslim faith. I grew up not knowing any other thing. I learned all my surahs and I went to Qur'anic school for some period of time. It was just who we were,” she remembers.
As she grew older, Kaba began to develop a personal understanding of Islam beyond her cultural upbringing and familial expectations. “I don’t speak Arabic, yet the Qur'an is in Arabic, so I had a mediated experience of the religion,” she says. “When I went to college, I took time to do my own independent study and my own reading and my own wrestling with what my beliefs are. It was a commitment I embraced as an individual.”
There is an urgency in Kaba’s voice as she talks about her journey of learning and love for Islam and what she calls a “direct unmediated relationship with Allah.” “I appreciate that in the faith you build a relationship with Allah by building virtues within yourself. That fulfills my understanding that one of the main goals of living is to shrink the distance between your values and your actions. I love how Islam stresses that you really come to know Allah through striving for justice,” she says.
This commitment to justice and questioning everything is also what led Kaba to abolition. Kaba describes herself a Prison Industrial Complex (“PIC”) Abolitionist. PIC Abolition is a vision and organizing tool that focuses on dismantling all carceral institutions and building a new society focused on care and accountability rather than punishment. “My progression towards an abolitionist politics and eventually embracing it was a process of unlearning so much,” she explains.
Kaba grew up with friends going in and out of Rikers and saw the ways in which punishment was ingrained into every facet of life. But it wasn’t until she experienced violence personally and began working with individuals who faced various forms of violence, including at a domestic violence organization, rape crisis hotline, and in classrooms, that she began to question incarceration as a solution. She explains that when she began asking questions and reading more on the issue, she realized that “this is all systemic and structural anti-Blackness, white supremacy and class violence.” Developing the language for this injustice was the first step towards a life dedicated to changing it.
Part of Kaba’s abolitionist journey has also been developing an understanding of how her Muslim faith informs her work to end the carceral system. “My faith absolutely informs my abolitionist work, but I did not always know that,” she reflects.
Kaba describes feeling vulnerable when discussing her faith publicly because she fears it may shift the narrative from her work and embolden those who simply want to debunk her analysis of the faith. Despite this apprehension, she begins to quote Hadith 34 from the Forty Hadith of al-Nawawi, “Whoever witnesses something evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is unable, then with his tongue; and if he is unable then with his heart — but that is the weakest form of faith.”
For Kaba, this hadith and many other teachings in Islam are a call to justice and a demand that Muslims work on all levels, independently and collectively, to take action against tyranny and evil. For her, police, prisons, and surveillance are very present evils in our society. “The reason I am an abolitionist in part is because I care a lot about harm. I care about harm whether it’s labeled criminal or not. It’s precisely because abolition is focused on harm that we’re against prisons because prisons as a rule harm people. Prisons are the central organizer of racialized gendered violence. They abuse and violate people by actual design. What’s more evil than that? To create an institution whose main role is to harm people through violence,” she expounds.
Kaba explains that she is not condoning the harms that some incarcerated people may have caused. Rather, she is trying to move society towards a place of accountability and healing instead of punishment. “We have to talk about how criminal behaviors are based on criminal law and enforced by police and courts. These systems were created by unequal and violent societies and do not serve the interests of all people. They serve the interest of people with power. How can a law operate fairly in an unequal, violent society?”
Kaba works with others to create community-based safety mechanisms that ask this question: “What is wellbeing for our communities as a whole?” However, these programs, even those proven to reduce harm in communities, are underfunded. Instead, local governments continue to give more money to cops and prisons, which have been proven to be ineffective, in order to maintain a system of violence and domination.
For Kaba, this means that more Muslims need to be involved in the abolitionist movement to change conditions with their hands and voices, and not just despair about the realities of the world. “There’s such a huge emphasis in Islam on mercy and abolition is rooted in compassion for those who do harm, those who cause harm, and those of us in the middle of it,” she begins. She goes on to explain that this focus on compassion and lessening suffering can be seen through the pillar of zakat, which creates an obligation to lessen the financial suffering of others through charity. Kaba also recognizes the ethos of the abolitionist struggle in teachings in the Qur'an that encourage believers to look at the root of issues rather than seeking temporary solutions.
“Prison industrial complex abolition is a structural and systematic analysis of oppression and Islam is also a structural and systematic analysis of oppression. Ultimately PIC abolition is a vision of a restructured world, it’s a world where we have everything that we need, and that includes food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, and clean water, and those things are foundational. Islam, for the believer, promises those things too and wants very much that everyone has these necessities,” she says. In this way, she says, abolition and Islam are not in conflict with each other but rather share common struggles.
Islam provides Kaba with a compass to navigate a world that often leaves her bereft. The understanding that there is something bigger than herself keeps her grounded in this world. Her famous phrase, “Hope is a discipline,” perfectly describes her practice of faith through action. “Abolition is unpopular but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do the work,” she tells me. She explains that she’s able to continue the work because she views hope, “not as an emotion but rather hope as a practical action.” She likens this to a hadith about planting trees even during the end of times. At the end, all we have are our actions.
For Muslims who are interested in abolition, Kaba suggests getting involved with organizations like Believers Bail Out and Abolition Ummah that expressly tie faith to PIC abolition. She also wants people to support a campaign called One Million Experiments, which works to support community-based projects that expand ideas about what keeps us safe beyond police and prisons.
“All my deepest beliefs about collectivity or interdependence, it turns out, can be attributed to my faith and my family and those things are inseparable for me. I want to encourage people to find your community and to rely on your folks, because it’s hard work to focus on trying to change our conditions toward more justice and some peace. Find a good community of people to be held by while you’re doing this work and faith can also hold you through.”
