Censorship of Religious Texts: The Limits of Pluralism

Abstract

This article focuses on an established area of Australian law which has been recently redeployed to restrict freedom of expression for anti-terrorism purposes. Long a field of controversy, particularly in the arts, literature and student media, censorship law is a politically malleable tool which has now been applied ostensibly to avert the incitement of terrorism. This article analyses two decisions of Australia's Classification Review Board in mid-2006 to refuse classification to two radical Islamic publications concerning 'jihad': Join the Caravan and Defence of the Muslim Lands. It first outlines the reasons for the decisions, before questioning whether the decisions were correctly made. It then examines whether the criteria for refusing classification are appropriate for dealing with religious texts, particularly in a climate of pervasive anti-terrorism sentiment which increasingly devalues freedom of expression as something which jeopardizes the higher public good of security.

Keywords: terrorism, censorship, classification, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, pluralism

JEL Classification: K10, K30, K40