This essay is published in collaboration with Inquest.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat in cell AL-101, nearly four years into a death sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
On a floor where every man was already in some form of solitary confinement, I was the only death row prisoner in full lockdown—and the only Muslim on the cellblock. The man in the cell next to me, whom I’d hardly spoken to since he moved in, was one of many mentally ill prisoners who got dumped into solitary from time to time. So when he banged on the wall between our cells, announcing that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, I didn’t exactly believe him.
“OK,” I responded politely to his yells, thinking of the umpteenth other ludicrous announcements he’d made in the past. “I’ll holler back at you later. I’m using the bathroom.”
As I began wrapping up my call with nature, his booming voice pierced the silence of my cell once again. Through the crack between our cells—just wide enough for a newspaper to pass through—he shouted that another plane had just hit. This time, it had struck the second of the two towers.
“Alright!” I hollered back as I scrambled to get my pants up. Voices were chattering up and down the block with a new urgency, and my heart rate started to climb. Something ominous was happening. I didn’t know what it was, but it had literally caught me with my pants down.
Soon enough, my neighbor wasn’t the only one shouting. The cellblock buzzed with speculation as everyone argued over what they were hearing on their radios in real time. Without a way to access the news myself, I sat in suspense, waiting for updates to be delivered through the walls.
A plane just hit the Pentagon, someone shouted half an hour later. Then, several minutes after that: another just crashed in Pennsylvania—they thought it was headed for the White House. I learned that the military was scrambling fighter jets; that they may have shot down the attacking plane in Pennsylvania. One tower fell, followed by the other. I heard that there was a white cloud of dust hanging over the city. That it sounded like Armageddon. Surrounded by cement, I wondered if the world was coming to an end.
In the midst of the confusion, it seemed like the guards had abandoned their rounds. There was an eerie absence of presence, and my thoughts began to spiral. What if this was an invasion? What would happen if the prison came under attack? Would they kill everybody inside, or abandon us and leave everyone to starve? As the world huddled together on the outside, I was utterly alone on the inside. I had no idea that in the days to come it was about to get lonelier.
Solitary at Central Prison was usually a cacophony of sound. People kicked at cell doors and banged on their metal food traps. They hurled threats back and forth, arguing loudly through the walls in frustration. But now a quiet hung in the void—an unspoken awareness that something serious had happened, and an uncertainty about when it was permissible to return to our usual madness. The newspapers were filled with somber images, and it was clear that the world outside was caught in a similar limbo. The entire country, like me, had been caught with its pants down.
It didn’t take long to find an enemy. I read in the local newspaper that the FBI had identified nineteen men, mostly from Saudi Arabia, as the hijackers. Since they were all presumed to be dead, I assumed there was nothing else that could be done. They’d fly the U.S. flag at half-staff to honor those who died, just as they had after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Things would return to normal, like they always did.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Anger was spreading, and across the country, people were beginning to demand retaliation. By the time I bought myself a radio a few weeks later, the list of those being held responsible was flipping faster than images on a slot machine:
The nineteen hijackers.
Osama bin Laden.
Al Qaeda.
The Taliban.
Afghanistan.
Radical Islamists.
The Qur'an.
Anyone who said Allahu Akbar—
Wore a kufi—
Or even said as-salaamu alaykum.
Here I was—in North Carolina, in prison, on death row, in solitary confinement. I couldn’t have been further away from Ground Zero if I’d been sitting in an igloo in the Arctic. And yet, as anything or anyone associated with Islam came to be treated as a threat, I, too, was swept into the widening dragnet.
I could feel the atmosphere hardening around me. The handcuffs around my wrists grew tighter, the guards’ words more clipped. Many had served in the military, and their faces and postures became increasingly hostile. If there had been moments of neutrality or peace between us before, those had disappeared.
No one mentioned my religion, but it seemed to shadow every exchange. Geopolitical tensions thousands of miles away—wholly unrelated to me—had suddenly become grounds for treating me as a threat.
In early October, I was moved from AL-101 back upstairs to cell BL-212. I’d been on that cellblock for over three years before I was sent to no man’s land, so returning to the old familiar cage was like a homecoming.
But as soon as I stepped onto the block, I noticed things had changed. A U.S. flag was pasted on the outside of someone’s cell door. It was disorienting. Nothing was ever supposed to be posted on the outside of a cell door. Yet there it was, proudly displayed on the cell door of a man sentenced to die by the government.
More disorienting still, none of my peers greeted me with an as-salaamu alaykum despite seeing my kufi. That had never happened before. Throughout the eight years I’d been in prison, Islam had the strongest and most visible community behind the walls. By the time I arrived in 1993, Islam had largely overtaken the Black Power movement as the dominant expression of Black consciousness. Across the five prisons in which I’d been held, brothers wore their kufis like flags. Pork was considered so abominable that even non-Muslims felt ashamed to eat it publicly. Prayer rugs and Qur'ans were so sacred that even the guards wouldn’t dare touch them. There was a sense of pride bound up in that identity—and it didn’t matter whether you were a Five Percenter, a member of the Nation of Islam, a Moor, a Sunni, or a Shia.
But in the weeks and months that followed 9/11, that visible community began to disappear. Before the attacks, there had been little patriotism behind bars. After all, all of us had been deemed adversaries of the state, locked away for years, decades, lifetimes. The titles of the legal documents bearing our names began the state versus, a constant reminder that the government considered us an opposing force. Because of this, there was an almost complete separation between national and personal identity among those of us considered “conscious”—those who thought critically about our condition.
After 9/11, that changed. Suddenly, everybody was saying “we” and “us” when referring to the United States. It was jarring, hearing men behind bars talk about what “we” needed to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was like watching people switch jerseys in the middle of the game.
The ripple effects of post-9/11 patriotism—and post-9/11 Islamophobia—reverberated throughout the prison. Kufis became a rare sight, worn only by the most devout. Under pressure from family and friends, many men left Islam and returned to their previous beliefs. A casual “what’s up” or a head nod began to replace as-salaamu alaykum. The adhan (the call to prayer) that brothers had once competed to call out fell silent. Believers prayed alone in their cells, holding tight to the rope of Allah, isolated in a way they had never been before.
In the years immediately following 9/11, I spiraled into a great deal of despair—what I now consider the lowest point in my life. I felt as though I would never leave solitary confinement, much less prison or death row. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel, and I no longer wanted to continue suffering. Death felt like the best solution, and I began to seriously contemplate it. The fact that Islam had become the enemy in the eyes of those around me only deepened my isolation.
But it was during the darkness that the Qur'an spoke to me. At the time, I practiced the tenets of Islam but wrestled with a fundamental spiritual conflict: the Nation of Islam taught that there was no life after death, but more traditional Islam promised resurrection and accountability. I couldn’t reconcile the two belief systems, and in that moment, I decided to choose. I chose Islam as taught by Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him—the Quran as the direct word of God, the promise of an afterlife, and the belief that my life and my suffering had purpose. My recommitment felt like a rebirth, a transformation. Long after the state had written me off, Islam embraced me with open arms and saved my life.
When I was finally released from solitary around 2004 and allowed to socialize with the general population on death row, I began to rebuild my ummah, or spiritual community. The brothers on the block already knew me, or knew of me. I had spent years studying Islam across its traditions, from the Ahmadiyya movement and Sufi spirituality to hadith literature and Shia scholarship. They called me Alim, or The Knowledgeable, and they looked up to me.
Islam was slowly returning to the prison after the attacks. By the time I rejoined the general population, congregational prayer had resumed, but my peers told me that it had not always been permitted. After 9/11, they said, the prison had prohibited communal prayer unless a staff member was present—a restriction that had not existed before.
In 2011, during our weekly study group (taleem), I was elected as the facility’s imam by an overwhelming vote. I felt the weight of that responsibility and was inspired to help restore Islamic practices that had been lost for a number of reasons, including 9/11. On my block, I started to call the adhan and lead salat (daily prayers). I appointed brothers on each of the other seven blocks to do the same. I wanted to see a real change in the conduct of those around me, and I had the community’s trust to lead it.
The response at Central Prison was immediate and powerful. Brothers began returning to Friday prayers (Jummah). The kufis reappeared, and the adhan once again rang out across the blocks. There was a stirring, a rejuvenation, as the deen (Islam as a way of life) gradually returned. My role as imam became more than a position—it became the purpose I had fought for in my darkest moment, and I felt deeply grateful for it.
Today, my faith is very strong. I know what my purpose is in life. I continue feeling deeply committed to practicing Islam, and I cannot foresee any circumstance that would take me off this path. My ummah strengthens me, and the daily greetings of my fellow Muslims, all striving for paradise, are a constant reminder that I am not alone.
As-salaamu alaykum.
Alim Braxton (a.k.a. Rrome Alone) is a Muslim writer, rapper, and activist on North Carolina’s death row in Raleigh. He is coauthor of Rap and Redemption on Death Row: Seeking Justice and Finding Purpose Behind Bars and the creator of the album Mercy on My Soul.
