Qur'an found among the laundry

The Qur'an found among the laundry is a physical sign of both the restrictions on Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s religious life at Guantánamo and the small, uncertain changes within that regime. He found the copy beneath his clothes in July 2004, took it to his cell without explanation, and later used it in conversations about faith. Its appearance coincided with a gradual shift: by the end of that month, he prayed under the watch of new guards without being stopped.

Discovery and Possession

In July 2004, Slahi found the book in his box of laundry, hidden beneath the clothes. He worried that taking it might amount to stealing it in order to save it, but carried it to his cell. No one asked why he had taken it, and he did not volunteer an explanation. The quietness of the episode matters: the book entered his cell not through an announced change in policy, but through an unnoticed opening in the ordinary delivery of laundry.

At the time, Slahi had been forbidden from carrying out religious rituals and thought that his interrogators would not welcome a copy of the Qur'an in his cell. The religious climate seemed especially sensitive. He noted that the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo had been arrested, a Muslim soldier had been charged with treason, and many Arabic and religious books were banned. The book’s presence therefore did not amount to secure permission to practice; it was an object he kept without knowing whether its possession would be accepted.

Reading, Faith, and Restricted Books

The restrictions reached beyond religious texts. Slahi also learned that books for studying English were banned. When he asked why, he was told that detainees learned the language quickly and could understand the guards. In that explanation, the book ban appears not only as a limit on religious reading but as part of a broader effort to restrict what detainees could learn and comprehend.

The Qur'an found among the laundry later became one of two religious books brought into Slahi’s discussions with an interrogator, alongside a Bible. When they had time, the two discussed religion and consulted the books. Slahi explained that he was an admitted sinner who asked God for forgiveness; in another exchange, he referred to the Qur'an’s teaching that God does not punish people until a messenger has been sent to teach them. The text thus served both as a source of religious reference and as a means of conversation across a difference in belief.

A Tentative Change in Practice

Slahi continued asking for Islamic books, but said that he received none; the books available to him were novels and books about animals. His access to this single copy did not end the wider restriction. Nor did the shift in the guards’ response amount to a formal guarantee that religious practice would be allowed.

At the very end of July 2004, however, Slahi prayed while new guards watched and no one commented. He described this as the emergence of a new era in his detention. The book’s discovery and the unchallenged prayer were distinct developments, but together they mark a change from concealment and uncertainty toward a limited, observed tolerance. The copy found under laundry remains significant not because it resolved the restrictions, but because it made religious reading possible within them.