When Only God Can See explores how the body and soul of Muslim prisoners become a site of religious contestation between themselves and the carceral regimes in the context of the Global War on Terror. Drawing from ethnographic accounts of Muslim ex-prisoners held in Egypt, Guantanamo Bay, and US black sites, this research amplifies prisoner voices, moving beyond securitized narratives. It examines the religious experiences of prisoners are intrinsic foremost to their personhood, formations of popular theology and hermeneutics, and even to ethereal beliefs. Muslim prisoners are regularly confronted with issues that are unique to their situation – such as maintaining ritual purity when there is little access to clean water, maintaining communal prayers in isolation or discerning prayer times and Qibla when knowledge of time and space is unattainable. These struggles reflect broader histories of political imprisonment targeting Muslims within the context of the Global War on Terror. 

Walaa Quisay is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality, and Politics and co-author of When Only God can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners. She worked at numerous academic institutions, including the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham, and Istanbul Sehir University. In 2019, she received her DPhil.