[Buddha-l] Dangerous religious literature?

[Richard Hayes]

Dear denizens,

Another interesting article in the New York Times that caught my eye recently 
was about a policy to clear US prison libraries of potentially dangerous 
religious literature. Apparently this whole thing got started shortly after 
the 2001 celebration of my daughter's birthday on September 11. Something 
happened that day that alarmed American prison authorities into thinking that 
Muslims might become dangerous radicals if allowed to read some Muslim 
writings while in prison.

Not wanting to appear as if they were singling out Muslims for special 
censorship, the prison authorities decided to set up lists of up to 150 books 
from each of 20 religious traditions that prisoners are allowed to read. (The 
Napoleonic Code comes to America at last! Everything that is not expressly 
declared to be legal is illegal.) All books NOT on the allowed list must be 
removed from prison libraries.

The NY Times article reports that many authorities feel the selection of 
allowed books in their particular religious tradition is strangely skewed. 
The 150 Christian books, for example, include no writings by church fathers 
or traditional Catholic theologians, many Calvinist books and even more 
non-denominational evangelical Protestant books; it sounds as though 
Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists and Anglicans need not apply. Perhaps The 
Rapture is regarded as the only "get out of jail free" card.

I am not sure which books Buddhists are allowed to read. If anyone feels like 
doing a bit of Googling (or Ask-ing or AstaVista-ing or HotBot-ing), it would 
be fun to get collectively alarmed and outraged about the selection of 
Buddhist books that US prisoners are allowed to read. (Lots of Lama Surya Das 
and Bhagwan Rajneesh? Or maybe the prison authorities watched Jack Nicholson 
in "The Last Detail" and have chosen lots of Soka Gakkai literature.)

Question for extra credit. Is it actually required, or simply very helpful, to 
be uncommonly stupid before being allowed to make policies for prison 
libraries?

Still on the outside looking in,
Richard Hayes