Censorship in the Era of the Ground Zero Mosque and Islamic Debate

Several months ago, I gave an editorial on PJTV in opposition to our government’s apparent censorship and sanitization of the use of Islamic terminology in terrorism cases. Incredible though it seemed, the 600 or so references to such terms as Jihad, radical Islam, Hamas and Hezbollah in the original 9/11 Report had been reduced to zero in the government’s 2009 Counter-Terrorism Lexicon, a 2009  FBI document and the recent Ft. Hood report.

At that time, I called upon Senators Lieberman and Collins, who had been doing some praiseworthy work in the area on their Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, to investigate this disturbing suppression, which many of us felt distorted reality and would lead to further violent acts.

I suggested four avenues for Lieberman and Collins to investigate:

1. To what degree are government documents and reports (perhaps both public and classified documents) being sanitized regarding Islamic terminology?
2. To what degree is there a program or practice of verbal censorship? What are government employees allowed to say in their internal meetings?  And are there internal policies or what the media might call “style guides” that prevent Secretaries of Departments, their staff and even the White House Press Spokesperson from using specific Islamic terminology?
3. Who are the people or organizations inside the government that are pushing for this censorship?
4. What people or groups outside the U.S. government may have been advocating this censorship?

My initial editorial was primarily in response to the events at Ft. Hood, when the religious motivations of Major Nidal Hasan were obfuscated, although the major apparently delivered unnerving lectures on the Koran to his confused Bethesda medical colleagues and shouted “Allahu Akbar” while massacring his fellow soldiers.  The near disaster at Times Square followed with the same Islamic connections of the would be bomber similarly obscured — the use of Islamic terminology still under internal government censorship.

Now, in this era of the Ground Zero mosque controversy, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has attempted to expand what appears to be internal government censorship into the public sphere with her threat to “investigate” those who oppose the mosque.  This outrageous (and unhinged) abuse of power was clearly aimed at stifling debate and free expression — i.e., a form of public censorship.

Given these new and yet more disturbing circumstances, I would like to renew my call for a congressional investigation of possible censorship of Islamic terminology among government workers.  I would like to add to that investigation an examination of whether freedom of speech on similar matters is potentially being restricted, intentionally or unintentionally, by members of Congress.

It’s worth noting that, according to a recent poll, 61 percent of the country currently opposes the Ground Zero mosque, including such notable colleagues of Ms. Pelosi as Harry Reid and Howard Dean. Any attempt to suppress free discourse on this matter is a frontal assault on our constitutional values.

It is time we seriously investigated these matters.  Large decisions are being made on the nature of our foreign policy and the way we view ourselves and the world.  Nothing less than the most open, non-coerced, debate is called for.