Before the end of the year, we invite you to support Letters Behind Bars, an ongoing campaign to provide our incarcerated Muslim sisters and brothers with complimentary Islamic books and literature.

For more than three decades, Jarir Bookstore has been actively fulfilling Islamic book and literature requests from inmates across the nation. In addition, Jarir Bookstore collaborates with Southern California community members and organizations who work closely with Muslim inmates, including former Senior Chaplain Maria Khani, who has been working with inmates for over 15 years.

Every day Jarir Bookstore multiple phonecalls, handwritten and virtual requests for Islamic literature, and in 2023 alone, distributed over $48,000 worth of material to various correctional institutions free of charge. The objective of this campaign is to raise enough funds to continue fulfilling these requests through the end 2024, and support our Muslim sisters and brothers on their religious and educational journeys. The goal is to sustain these campaigns is to establish an inexhaustible fund for these requests.

We need to continue creating a larger fundraising campaign that can help activate a year long sustainable program of an inexhaustible fund for these book requests. Jarir Bookstore has over a decades long partnership with Senior Chaplain Maria Khani, who has been working with inmates for close to 20 years in Orange County and Los Angeles jails. You can read about her work which has been covered by the Los Angeles Times.

Indeed, ‘prescribed charitable offerings’ are only to be given to the poor and the indigent, and to those who work on administering it, and to those whose hearts are to be reconciled, and to free those in bondage, and to the debt-ridden, and for the cause of God, and to the wayfarer. This is an obligation from God. And God is all-knowing, all-wise (9:60).

To learn more about Jarir Bookstore read this article here. All donations to Letters Behind Bars are Zakat eligible and tax deductible. Letters Behind Bars is a tax exempt nonprofit 501(c)(3). Tax ID #: 88-0887606.