UK opposition calls for investigation into forced prison conversions
The UK's shadow justice secretary has urged the Labour government to investigate reports of Muslim gangs forcing prisoners to convert to Islam, citing data showing a disproportionate number of white Muslim inmates.
Britain's opposition Conservative party is pressing the Labour government to investigate and end forced religious conversions in the country's prisons, following renewed reports that Islamist gangs are coercing vulnerable inmates, often white British men, to convert to Islam.
Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, said on social media that Islamist gangs control many prisons and that conversion to Islam is seen as the only way for some inmates to stay safe. He cited data indicating that one in five Muslim prisoners is white, a proportion four times higher than in the general population. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Timothy said experts have repeatedly warned about forced conversions driven by Islamic gangs and called for an urgent official inquiry.
The issue is not new. Sky News reported as early as 2013 that inmates were being bullied into converting to Islam, with the Prison Officers Association describing it as a symptom of the growing power of Muslim gangs behind bars. A 2022 report by Jonathan Hall, the government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, described Islamist terrorists acting as self-styled emirs, exerting control over the wider Muslim prison population, recruiting vulnerable or lonely prisoners, and using conversion backed by implicit or actual violence.
An independent review by Colin Bloom, a former government faith advisor, similarly found that prisoners who failed to identify as Muslim could be denied protection from dominant Muslim gangs on a wing, or face violence and intimidation from those same groups. The review also cited a 2019 Ministry of Justice report noting the aggressive encouragement of conversions to Islam across the prison estate.
The Ministry of Justice has pushed back against the claims, stating that most prisons show no evidence of gang-based extremism. A spokesperson said forced religious conversions are not tolerated and that measures have been taken to improve the identification of nascent extremist gang activity through advanced training and data collection. The ministry also noted that terrorist prisoners have been banned from holding positions of authority in corporate worship.
Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, described the situation as an outrageous state of affairs and a significant national security risk. He argued that the British government has lost control over its prisons, which he called jihadist training camps, and linked the problem to what he described as defective immigration policy and large-scale Islamic migration.
Statistics cited in the reports show that Muslims account for nearly one in five of the prison population in England and Wales, despite making up only 6.5 percent of the general population. The government insists it does not tolerate intimidation, gang activity, or faith-based coercion of any kind in its prisons.
