Answer: We don’t know. And why? Because, as Steven Emerson objects, the Department of Homeland Security is refusing to identify which “leading” academics and others recently met with Secretary Michael Chertoff to codify “a softer approach to government lexicon about terrorists and their ideological motivations.” Nor is DHS identifying the organizational affiliations of these scholars and other advisers.

Emerson concludes:

So America, after serving for more than two centuries [as] the sanctuary for huddled masses yearning to breathe free, is being asked to minimize liberty [of expression] against fanatics bent on a global religious state. The [academics’ and others’ recommendations to Chertoff don’t] offer examples to show where Islam and secular democracy have reinforced each other, or explain how Shariah law, the imposition of religion into state affairs, is “fully compatible” with secular democracy.

Who are the scholars telling us how or how not to speak of terrorism? With what political forces have they sided? Why is the DHS silent about this?