Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”What a mess. In order to avoid seeming to discriminate against Islam, prisons are paring down their libraries to just a few titles --with the result that the government, in effect, makes itself an expert on what constitutes the legitimate interpretation of any religion. Muslims blow people up, so prisoners aren't allowed to read the Fathers of the Church or the latest volume from their favorite Conservative or Reform Rabbi.
If some religions (or their strains, perhaps) are in fact deleterious to public order, how can they be restrained without permitting the government to restrict religious practice willy-nilly?
