Ex-Muslims Slam Facebook for Shutting Down Pages That Disrespect Islam
Facebook has been criticized for unfairly banning pages of ex-Muslims and censoring anti-Islamic posts. The outcry came from former adherents of the Islam faith from Australia and was directed against the popular social media giant for also shutting down Arabic-based atheist groups.
Facebook pulled the plug on such groups for violating its community rules on disrespecting religions and groups of people. It was also accused of filtering anti-Muslim information. Among the pages that were locked are Ex-Muslims of North America and Mufti News — both respectively have around 25,000 likes.
The underground group said the pages served as a venue to denounce their former religion and band together with other former adherents of Islam. "In Australia, we have a private ex-Muslim online community that has been crucial with regards to providing support, guidance and safety of its members," the secret group's spokeswoman said.
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"This platform has been a safe haven for people who otherwise would feel alone (and) misplaced, and face many psychological and social struggles," she went on. "Restrictions to these platforms would be overwhelmingly damaging for ex-Muslims who are too afraid to go public with their views due to the taboo of leaving and criticizing a religion," she went on to say.
Atheist group pages that were also banned included Atheist Republic, which had almost 1.7 million followers; Iraqi Atheists and Arab Atheist Network. But there are some anti-Muslim pages that continue to exist like Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, Ex-Muslims of Norway and Council of Ex-Muslims of New Zealand.
One pro-Muslim Facebook group urged its 10,000 followers to declare "war against kuffar (unbelievers)" by flagging "anti-Islamic pages." The spokeswoman appealed to Facebook to allow ex-Muslim pages to stay online and to "improve their reporting system to protect groups such as ours."
Peter Fray, a journalism professor at the University of Technology Sydney agrees that social responsibility is needed, considering that Facebook is not an empty vessel where people can pour whatever they want. He also understands social media's role in stopping hate speech but fears this will be done at the cost of freedom of speech.
