Some Religious Texts Being Removed from Prisons

While watching a debate on FoxNews this morning I was amazed to hear talk radio host Mark Williams actually say:

“[Islam] is a 7th century death cult. It’s violent by nature.”

His starkly truthful response was a rebuke of the other speaker in the debate that kept saying over and over again that “Islam is not violent by nature.” I must applaud Mark Williams for having the brass to actually say it like it is. Bravo, sir!

And what was the debate about? From The Buffalo News comes one of many reports today on the move to remove Islamic texts from prison systems. It’s a move that should extend all the way to the Qur’an itself if it does not. On the specifics I’m not yet clear.

I’m in disagreement with officials making this an issue of equivalence by removing Christian and Jewish texts too (again, no mention of the Bible itself being removed), but this is a step in the right direction on the Al-Qaeda and jihadists recruiting fronts, so we should take what we can get at this point when it comes to proper enforcement.

NEW YORK — Inmates at the federal prison camp in Otisville were stunned when they entered the chapel library on Memorial Day: Hundreds of books had disappeared from the shelves.

The removal of the books is occurring nationwide. It is part of a long-delayed federal directive, ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, designed to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates.

Three inmates from Otisville filed a lawsuit over the policy, saying their Constitutional rights were violated. They say all religions were affected — Islamic prayer books, Christian books and ancient Jewish texts were among those removed.

Inmate Douglas Kelly, who described himself as a representative of the prison’s Muslim community, complained of “a denial of our First Amendment rights.”

He said books on Islam already were among the smallest religious collections in the library and had been trimmed in half in the Memorial Day removal.

He said most of the Islamic books which disappeared involved the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and contained instructions on how Muslims are supposed to pray and how to follow diet and religious laws, along with the statements of religious scholars.

“A lot of what we are missing were definitely prayer books or prayer guides and religious laws on the part of the Muslim faith,” he said.

But the government stressed that the new rules don’t entirely clear the shelves of prison chapel libraries.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain that prison libraries limited the number of books for each religion to between 100 and 150 books under the new rules. But he said officials would expand the number after a second look at the list of permitted books.

Feldman said the order to remove books stems from an April 2004 Department of Justice review of how prisons choose Muslim religious services providers. It is not exactly clear why it took so long for the order to take effect, but prison officials needed time to pore over a long list of books and determine what’s acceptable.

I’d like to remind these prisoners that they gave up many basic rights the day they entered the prison system. They especially do not have the right to metamorphose themselves into violent jihadists ready for action when they are finally released!

I am left to believe that the Qur’an is still considered “acceptable”. This is, of course, a blunder but this event opens the door an inch towards outlawing Islam in the United States. It’s a start.