Sufi Non-Doing Offender Rehabilitation: Positive and Peacemaking Criminology in Practice

• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X21990782
• Date: 01 June 2021
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Gila Amitay,Donya Hawa-Kamel,Natti Ronel
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X21990782

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2021, Vol. 65(8) 916 –936

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X21990782

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Article

Sufi Non-Doing Offender

Rehabilitation: Positive and

Peacemaking Criminology

in Practice

Gila Amitay1, Donya Hawa-Kamel2,

and Natti Ronel2

Abstract

Offender rehabilitation is a challenging goal that calls for ongoing creative

innovations. Amongst is a non-doing rehabilitative initiation that is inspired by

spiritual traditions. The aim of this paper is to present an application of non-doing

offender rehabilitation that has no declared intention to rehabilitate, carried by

a peacemaking Islamic Sufi route. Based on the positive criminology approach,

we conducted a qualitative phenomenological study consisted of interviews with

11 ex-prisoners who were employed in the Shadhiliyya-Yashrutiyya Sufi order as

construction workers and also with 35 Sufi disciple and leaders. We identified

five themes of non-doing: (1) atmosphere; (2) modeling; (3) social inclusion and

suspension of judgement; (4) spiritual meaning; (5) feasibility of transformative

processes. The discussion presents principles of a model of non-doing rehabilitation

in a spiritual community and emphasizes the research innovation in presenting non-

doing as a holistic method of inclusion within a transformative faith community.

Keywords

non-doing, rehabilitation, spiritual criminology, positive criminology, Sufi, prisoners

1Yezreel Valley Academic College, Israel

2Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Gila Amitay, Department of Criminology, Yezreel Valley Academic College, PO Box 19300,

Yezreel Valley, Israel.

Email: gilaa@yvc.ac.il

990782IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X21990782International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyAmitay et al.

research-article2021

Amitay et al. 917

Introduction

Offender rehabilitation is a challenging goal that calls for creative innovations.

Innovative spiritual-based methods such as yoga and meditation are considered to be

effective methods (Barrett, 2016; Himelstein, 2011; Kovalsky et al., 2020; Norman,

2015; Ronel et al., 2013), however, they are typically applied in restricted and local

programs. The aim of this paper is to present an application of the spiritual principle

of non-doing in offender rehabilitation, where there is no stated intention to rehabili-

tate and no specific program, as practiced by the Islamic Sufi peacemaking route.

Based on the positive criminology approach (Ronel & Elisha, 2020), this paper will

first present positive and peacemaking criminology as the criminological bases for

spiritual rehabilitation, then, we will present the Sufi philosophy and the Sufi way of

life as it was practiced in a rehabilitative non-doing in a Sufi order who hired ex-pris-

oners as construction workers in their holy place.

Positive and Peacemaking Criminology

Positive criminology is a recently defined perspective shared by existing theories and

models that indicate some typical attributes: promoting integration at different levels

and a focus on existing strengths and development of various influences that may help

individuals at risk and offenders to desist, to rehabilitate and to carry on with their

recovery (Ronel & Elisha, 2011, 2020). This perspective assumes that positively expe-

rienced influences and human encounters may promote planned and direct as well as

non-planned and indirect processes of change (Ronel & Segev, 2014). Thus, for exam-

ple, being exposed to the perceived altruism of volunteers was sufficient to initialize

an indirect change process among individuals in distressed life situations (Ronel,

2006; Ronel et al., 2013).

Peacemaking criminology perceives crime as emerging from suffering and pain

while simultaneously causing them (Pepinsky & Quinney, 1991). Therefore, it sug-

gests dealing with crime through love, compassion, and empathy, indicating a nonvio-

lent perspective of criminology and criminal justice that has the potential to end

suffering, and thus to end crime (Pepinski, 2015). In the realm of crime and social

deviance, we are acquainted with the desistance model through non-doing in rehabili-

tative groups that use Vipassana (Ronel et al., 2013) or yoga (Barrett, 2016; Kovalsky

et al., 2020; Norman, 2015), and programs that involve modeling and reflective prac-

tices such as the twelve-step programs (Chen & Gueta, 2015; Ronel, 1998). Referring

to the issue of the ownership of the criminal act, McNeill (2006) perceives probation

practitioners as supporters of desistance processes (that belong to the desister) rather

than providers of correctional treatment (that belongs to the expert). This shift in per-

spective does not mean rejecting “treatment” per se, but “seeing professional interven-

tion as being, in some sense, subservient to a wider process that belongs to the desister”

(McNeill, 2006, p. 46).

Returning the process to the person is both a practice of positive criminology and

peacemaking criminology that encourages a nonviolent intervention. Non-violent