A comment is being circulated on Facebook complaining that the site has not only allowed Islam-critical pages like "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" to thrive but has also removed four major Muslim Facebook pages with a total of about 2.5 million members. This "chain email" is thus claiming that Facebook has taken a dramatic anti-Islam stance, and the comment is further demanding that the site restore the Islamic pages, make it illegal to criticize Islam, and remove all FB pages that are critical of Islam. In other words, it is demanding that Facebook follow Islamic or sharia law.
While the comment claims that these Islamic pages were not anti-infidel in sentiment, its demands certainly are, and they belie any possibly "peaceful" notion of why these pages should be allowed back on Facebook.
Supporters of free speech are calling for this Islamist comment be searched out on FB and flagged in a show of support for Facebook's creators not to kowtow to censorship and to demonstrate that the non-Muslim world will not be subjugated under Islamic or sharia law.
Here is the comment:
Facebook Admins, Moderators, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Sheryl Sandberg, and Matt Cohler;
Although you have attended the world's best communication skills courses you have been most successful in growing great hatred and hostility between you and Muslims around the world, but seriously this time you have caused an almost unrepairable damage.
Only a few weeks after your irresponsible behavior during the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day events you most aggressively removed four of the largest Islamic Facebook Pages of total fans/likes over 2.5 million Facebook members. That happened on the morning of Thursday 8th July, 2010.
These four Facebook pages were totally peaceful and free of any hate speech, but you removed it ignoring the feelings of more than 2.5 Million Facebook Muslims and disrespecting over 1.5 Billion Muslims worldwide.
And now since that is what it had come down to you, with your irresponsibility and fake preach of freedom of speech, have left us no other choice other than permanently boycotting Facebook. And now we are giving you a 2 weeks notice - ending at midnight of 21st July, 2010 - to fulfill our demands or else we will leave Facebook....
Our demands are:
1- Reactivating the four pages that have been disabled
2- Adding a Facebook Term that illegalizes disrespecting Islamic religious symbols
3- Disabling any Facebook Page, Group, or Event that shows direct or indirect disrespect towards Islamic religious symbols
The pages that were unfairly removed are:
Facebook.com/Rassoul.Allaah - About 1,600,000 Likes
Facebook.com/Logo.Ramadan - About 600,000 Likes
Facebook.com/Love.Mohammed - About 200,000 Likes
Facebook.com/Quran.Lovers - About 70,000 Likes
Not to be too snarky about it, but maybe the Muslims should start their own social networking site...call it BurkaBook, or something.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be interesting to see if FB gives in to their demands. I'm not an FB user, but if I was, and they were to give in the ludicrous demands, I'd drop FB in a blink of an eye.