After men were arrested for plotting to attack the Fort Dix army base, right-wing activist and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer called for an investigation into U.S. mosques, warning that Saudi money was fomenting extremism across the country. “Let the ACLU howl about ‘religious freedom,’” wrote Bauer. Now Bauer is applauding a Justice Department order that cleared out prison chapel libraries of books ranging from “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” to Christian tracts to Islamic texts. The Bureau of Prisons also called for audio and video monitoring of prison worship areas.
No word from prison evangelist and religious-right commentator Charles Colson – he’s been busy warning that “Islam is a vicious, evil … Islamo-fascism is evil incarnate.”
Seeming to echo those sentiments, Bauer’s praise for the crackdown on inmate religion is limited to its effects on Muslims, and he goes further, warning of “the extremists who are not behind bars” and calling for the government to monitor mosques. To justify spying on houses of worship, Bauer asserts that this is something Christians aren’t bothered by:
Bauer says he and most Christians do not fear someone from the federal government sitting in their church and listening to a typical sermon, so mosques should not be bothered by it either.
