Reflecting on the recent decision to ban two Islamist books, Norm Abjorensen is critical of how censorship has been used in the war on terror to pursue political rather than security goals.

In July 2006 the Australian Government took the unusual step of banning two radical Islamic books on security grounds - the only western nation to have done so. Interestingly, the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions had both ruled that neither book came within the purview of the tough sedition laws passed in 2005 as part of new anti-terrorism laws. The two books banned, Defence of the Muslim Lands and Join the Caravan, are both by the late Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian-born Islamic radical who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989. They are the first books banned in Australia for many years.