Obama administration censors propaganda, while pushing its own

UPDATE: The DOJ has reversed its decision and released a full, unredacted transcript

Terrorist coward Omar Mateen, speaking in Arabic, told a 911 dispatcher that he was an Islamic soldier moments after he murdered innocent men and women at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. He pledged his allegiance to ISIS and commented on US foreign policy, according to transcripts released by the FBI.

Unfortunately, the transcripts are just partial, with the Department of Justice scrubbing references to radical Islam to avoid them being used as ISIS propaganda. In this decision, however, the Obama administration creates its own propaganda.

Related: Dow Constantine blames everything but ISIS for Orlando shooting

“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told NBC. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].”

Unfortunately, this is yet another contrived argument to avoid admitting to the public that some people misused Islamic teachings to commit acts of terror.

This censorship has nothing to do with keeping ISIS from using this shooting and allegiance for propaganda purposes. By that argument, the federal government shouldn’t even acknowledge a shooting took place or allow photos and video of the crime scene. After all, that could be used to “further his propaganda.” If ISIS chose to use this for propaganda, they don’t need transcripts.

Instead, this censorship is about denying the public access to information that they feel will make Muslims look bad by association. Now, while mostly well-intentioned, it further pushes the notion that these terrorists are actual representatives of Islam. (I say “mostly” because this is also a way to present a narrative this story is about gun control, not radical Islamic terrorism.)

As I said last week, the problem with this reasoning is that by failing to separate the extremist elements from the majority of peaceful elements in the Muslim community, it actually pretends they’re one in the same. I don’t believe that. I think all religions have extremists and I’ll happily point them out so we don’t, not even for a second, think any religion stands for or accepts extremists.

The average person is able to differentiate between an extremist representation of a religion and a mainstream representation. It’s why no one looks at the Westboro Baptist Church and pretends they’re mainstream. Will there be exceptions? Of course. Bigotry and stupidity exist.

Instead, we censor material that helps us better understand the enemy, while giving credence to ideologues like King County Executive Dow Constantine to push the absurd notion that this is about everything but terrorism.

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