In one of his early-1980s routines, Richard Pryor talks about the experience of being inside the Arizona State Penitentiary during the filming of Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder. He talks about the various gangs that populated the prison and says that one should particularly avoid the “Double Mulsims,” going on to say that they have “been here twice” and “can’t wait to get back to Allah.”
I grew up with this album, and the notion of the “Double Muslim” has always been in the back of my head. I inferred from Pryor’s description that these people were Muslims who believed they had been reincarnated and were for that experience all the more eager to return to Paradise. Recent searching around on the net, though, has revealed nothing to support the notion that there even is such a thing as a “double muslim” (other than several coincidental word placements and references I took to be misspellings of “double muslin”).
So, was Pryor making that whole thing up? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t by any means think that he would be above such fictionalizing. After all, this is the guy who is on what I think at last count was his fourth version of how he came to be on fire. But still, I’d like to have some feeling of knowing for sure about this.
