Slashdot Mirror
Pakistan Lifts Ban After Facebook Deletes Offending Page
crimeandpunishment writes "Facebook is back in Pakistan today. A day after Bangladesh banned the social networking site, the Pakistani government lifted its ban after officials from Facebook apologized for the 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' page and removed it from the site. The page caused outrage and protests among Pakistan's Muslim population, and led to the ban two weeks ago. A spokesman for Pakistan's office of information technology said Facebook assured the government 'nothing of this sort will happen in the future.'"
way to cave face book. please move your hq to islamabad.
I'm turning my face into a caricature of the Prophet.
which is totally what she said
So as soon as the furor has died down, and the controversy is no longer driving as much traffic to Facebook as Pakistan's ban reduced it, Facebook decides to "do the right thing". The right thing, that is, to make the numbers.
I rather enjoyed deluding myself that Facebook was standing up for free expression, denouncing idiotic religious extremism, etc., but I now realize the folly of that thinking. Thank you, Facebook, for restoring my faith in the utterly amoral nature of American business.
The world is full of these types now in our age of appeasement. Another repeat of history is almost due. And after such a short time, while people are still alive from the last time this happened. UGH! Sickening!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Fine, if that's the way you want to go with it, lets all be "tolerant" of what _any_ other group doesn't like.
I mean, if Russia doesn't like something, lets get rid of whatever it is they don't like. If France doesn't like the anti-France jokes, lets scrub sites of anything resembling it. If MADD doesn't like alcohol references, lets be "tolerant" and get rid of those as well, oh hey, 2 birds there. Oh there are a lot of groups who are offended by the idea of evolution, scrub that. Oh hey, there are other groups who only believe we come from aliens, etc. Scrub anything anti-alien created/derived.
It's a slippery slope. If you don't want to read something, click away, or hey, just don't click it in the first place. It's not _my_ problem if you don't like something that is legal in my country where my post is located.
Huge slippery slope. Cave to one groups demands and now you've set precedent. Now the next group sees that you cave to demands, so lets all demand what we want. I mean, hell, we can't police what we view ourselves so fuck it, lets have everyone self censor so I can live happily the way I want to. Fuck the rest of the world and their ideas!
Yeah! Selective censorship fixes EVERYTHING! Just cave into the most aggressive believers, and you tend to generate more aggressive believers.
So, what happens when 1000+ pages are now created, celebrating Draw Mohammad Month, Draw Mohammad Brunch, Draw Mohammad Restaurant, Finger-Paint Mohammad with your Toes, Bake a Mohammad Cake, etc., etc.
If you ban all mockery of religion that gets offended, then many religions will suddenly decide to get offended - and many groups will decide to define themselves as religion in order to get the censorship ability.
There's always going to be overlap between validly interpreting religion as an outsider, and taking an insulting view from the perspective of an insider - making that perceived insult a crime is equivalent to making observations as an outsider a crime. I am not prohibited from drawing Mohammad. Creating a system where I am prohibited is saying my view isn't as valid as the aggressive believers in that space.
Ryan Fenton
I'm with Bill Maher on this one. Religious thought, in all it's forms, is a cancer of our civilisation. If you can't reason with something which threatens you, and you can't avoid it doing damage to you, then it needs to be exterminated.
Pretty poorly, considering that you're still alive to post that....
The issue is that the radical Muslims are just that, radicals. just like the radical Christians, and the radical Jews, etc. hell, there's even been radical Buddhists doing this sort of thing in Sri Lanka. the problem is that we only hear about the radical nutjobs out there... but there's a billion Muslims on the planet. if they were *really* as bad as fox "news" would have you believe, we'd have turned this place into a self-illuminating glass-floored parking lot by now.
Or to turn the tables another way, imagine if the only Christians you ever heard about were people like David Koresh?
Religious views offend me, lets petition Facebook to remove all pages with offensive content!
Why not? They removed pages that were supporting a political and religious viewpoint (free speech and cartoons) to cater for the views and feelings a single groups of people. What about my views, and those of everybody else?
New rule for Facebook, if they want to play that game, is that in order to be perceived as being fair, they must necessarily remove any content that is offensive to some group or people.
For a minute think that you totally, fully, blindly believe in Quran and that God/Allah is going to fry your ass if you do not follow his words
That's all very fine except no one can quote the passage dictating no pictures be made of Mr. Mohammad. The best they can do is make a tortured trail of logic between a prohibition against worshiping images leads to no pictures. If you think the people making cartoons on facebook and Dutch newspapers are in danger of worshiping them then you're sadly mistaken of the entire point of drawing them. Such intolerance is in need of correction, not ever more unilateral tolerance.
while Israel has just boarded a flotilla of ships killing 19 people in the process for importing wheelchairs, cement and wood banning a webpage seems a rather trivial response in comparison
A lot of news gets ignored. A couple of weeks ago some guy firebombed a mosque in Florida while people were worshipping there. Not a peep on the news. A few days later two white supremacists shot a couple of cops who pulled them over for something, then got themselves shot in a firefight. Not a peep on the news.
Meanwhile, CNN is interviewing American Idol winners...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
We have every right to criticize anyone we want. It saddens me the only free venues of the internet are falling by the wayside to be replaced by corporate websites where shit like this runs rampant.
OH NO! Hey look everyone, it's MUHAMMED waving at us!
0/
/|
/ \
We're gonna get banned!
So the US is funding Israel, which just killed a number of people on a humanitarian flotilla delivering food to blockaded Gaza today, a flotilla on which there is a Jewish holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner and various European MPs. The US grabs Iraqis off the street and puts them in Abu Ghraib, forces them to masturbate and films them doing so (besides the one tortured to death). The forced masturbation is allowed to be done, but not broadcast on US TV because our good Christian values does not allow us to see what we are doing over there or something.
So on top of all this bloodshed and mayhem the US causes in these countries, as their bodies pile up, Americans are now attacking their culture and religion. It is an attempt to dehumanize the people already being killed. If drones were not flying through Pakistan killing people, it would be one thing, but this Facebook thing is just another attack on all the blood and bodies Americans are stacking up in these countries. It has worked too - this sort of thing has stirred up fundamentalists in Pakistan, who just bombed some mosques of the moderate Ahmadis. So the usual US practice of getting rid of secular moderates and putting radical Islamists in charge is working.
You know, I really don't have a problem with people posting pro-Klan stuff online, especially somewhere like FaceBook where it's linked to their real name. Makes it much easier to avoid having anything to do with them. If you think that people of a certain skin colour are inferior, then I'd much rather that you said it in public and self-designated as an idiot than that you kept it private.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
We understand the other point of view. The point is in a free society, you do not have the right to not be offended.
so, the other point of view does not matter.
Every fairy tale god has taken its share of criticism, and ridicule throught out history, and in our so called free society, we are supposed to value the idea of freedom of expression.
Instead here we are selling out our constitution, our struggle from historical oppression of thought and ideas.... only to find ourselves giving all of it away to make Muslims happy? Fuck them and their selfishness. We make fun of Jesus Christ every fucking day here in America, in music, arts etc. We also praise him every day in music and arts... and the same for Muhammad. If they dont like it... They can stay out of our way of life. They can STOP watching and listening to our are. And they can stay the fuck off our websites.
Its all nice to "think of their side of things"... but their side of things beats women, forces them to wear burkas, and kills anyone who questions their god. WE already thought about their side of things... and it's fucking stupid.
Here we are giving in to it?
Fuck us. We're pathetic cowards.
I am sure we can all probably find something on facebook that each individual on the planet would find offensive. Why don't we all email them now and ask that they remove it?
I have deactivating my facebook account in respons[e]
Try to do it together with a large group of friends. Try to find a decent alternative they can all move to together. If you don't do that then you may eventually find yourself moving back just because your friends are still in Facebook and you feel you need it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Um, Larry Flynt might differ with you on that one.
Beyond that what you write is troubling. Who gets to decide what is meaningful? That's always been the issue surrounding free speech and censorship. We can all agree, to one degree or another, that some forms of speech are damaging, but beyond the "yelling fire in the theater" kind of speech, where there is a very direct correlation between the speech and the harm it can cause, it becomes far more difficult to meaningfully quantify.
I hardly expect Facebook to a beacon of free speech. It isn't even a beacon of security or privacy. Still, these people were exercising a legitimate right, and while I think they're rude and crude, I believe they have the right to be, just as Muslims have the right not to look.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ultimately is is both derogatory and hateful.
Agreed. And yet South Park showing a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding out of her ass is tolerated. Gotta love hypocrisy...
the fact is that there's a lot of bigots out there to get their lulz by insulting Islam.
Yeah, unfortunately that's true. The sad fact is, there are many who choose to attack Islam as a whole, without realizing that the real issue is with the extremists. Unfortunately, that makes the battle against the extremists rather tricky, as inevitably, the fucktard racists/bigots end up jumping onto the bandwagon.
More than that it's hardly an effective way of bringing the extremists into check.
Yeah, but you'll *never* bring the extremists into check. They've *already* decided that the western way of life must be stopped. The best you can do is paint them as the ridiculous zealots that they are, and hope that the rest of the world realizes that bowing to their demands is tantamount to surrendering to their beliefs.
The real problem is that the moderates aren't out there attacking the zealots with equivalent force. IMHO, moderate Islam needs to start actively working to cut the cancer of fundamentalism out of their ranks, as it's the only way these people will finally be marginalized.
It's an obvious slippery slope. Let's try a few scenarios, all tasteless in one way or another--
-Jews wanting to take down a "money grubbing Jews" page
-Christians wanting to take down a Woodland Critter Christmas South Park page
-Environmentalists wanting to take down an anti-Earth Day page
-Vegetarians wanting to take down a "For every animal you don't eat, I'll eat three" page
Honestly, where does it stop? You can't start taking down one page for one party because that would be discriminatory to everyone else. Why shouldn't environmentalists get the same treatment as Muslims? What about the vegetarians? They have their reasons and causes, too.
My guess is that Facebook knew how much money they were losing from advertisers and that once again, they would rather take the "less free" way out once again to rake in as much cash as possible.
Thanks, Zuckerberg!
Not to volunteer you for anything, but your demographic (passive, reasonable Muslim) is exactly who we need to speak out against this nonsense. I believe what you're saying is true, but based on 95% of media coverage, it would be easy to mistake the minority for the majority.
Draw Muhammad Day isn't about us standing up against terrorists. It isn't even about standing up against Islamic fundamentalists. It's about blatant bigotry. I'd venture to say most (if not close to all) people who participated did so out of pure hatred and with complete ignorance. This certainly violates Facebook's terms.
Fighting hateful behavior with more hateful behavior is sophomoric. While I really wish I could be defending free speech here, there has to be a point where I draw the line. If Draw Muhammad Day was a peaceful, public demonstration where people where drawing the prophet hugging pandas and sniffing roses, this post would be quite different. Unfortunately, that's not the case. People where being intentionally hurtful on a publicly-accessible, corporate-owned website. Facebook did the right thing.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
Um, the top TWO of three spots on Google news is about the Israeli shooting. Is it even remotely possible to be more popular than that?
As to the news worthiness of the Facebook issue, it is news worthy. It is in fact far more important that a few people dying in the fill-in-the-blank scary thing of week (please tell me shark panic season is almost upon us...). There are almost 7 billion people in the world and hundreds of thousands die each day. Any death is a tragedy, but when we are stripped of our ability to communicate, especially in the political realm, a crime is committed against millions. The repercussion has the ability to make miserable or kill untold numbers. Free speech is the top defense against most forms of oppression and persecution. Hell, oppression and persecution is ALWAYS preceded by a reduction in the freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is the primary defense against injustice in this world. When it gets reduced, you should care. Hell, if nothing else, count in your head the number of times that a reduction in the freedom of expression was followed by something terrible. Okay, now count how many times an increase in the freedom of speech was followed by something terrible. It is pretty easy math.
My concern about caving into the extremist Muslims on this issue is that it is it gives legitimacy to their viewpoint.... to the exclusion of any other viewpoint. The freedom of speech is something that is incredibly important to preserve, including preserving viewpoints that are on occasion distasteful and against your own viewpoint.
The dilemma of "new media" groups is to see how much editorializing will be done.... and sticking to your guns in terms of that editorializing. Facebook unfortunately, for good or ill, has become a community bulletin board where they have at least to this point cultivated all sorts of viewpoints including overtly political viewpoints that they are broadcasting and supporting.
If Facebook, or any other similar group starts to engage in censorship for what is overtly political speech, and much of what is done here in regards to cartoons of Muhammad is explicitly political speech by its nature, it puts that group onto incredibly slippery ground to be "forced" to censor other kinds of speech to the point they are really only advocating a particular political point of view. I don't have a problem with censoring types of content, such as pornographic images or perhaps groups that are advocating various kinds of illegal activity (aka some video on YouTube that is a "how to" for making meth.... to give an example). What concerns me here is more that the topic itself is somehow forbidden.
I don't see that Facebook would be censoring a cartoon depicting either George W. Bush or Barack Obama with nuclear missiles in a hat they are wearing. Why should the fact that the subject of the image simply being Muhammad be singularly targeted if anybody else would be acceptable? This is where it really goes over the top. If Muhammad were to be depicted in a manner that would be otherwise offensive and censored regardless of who is the subject of the image.... fine, get rid of the image.
The other aspect here is that those who are promoting the Islamic faith are cramming that faith down my throat, and the throat of everybody else in the world too. I respect the freedom of worship and belief. This is something which is essential to a free society in general and something I claim for myself. That freedom includes even the complete and total rejection of a belief in a god of any type, or worshiping things that I would consider down right silly.
By telling me that I, a non-believer in the Islamic faith, can't make a rendering of the image of Mohammad and use that image in a political fashion, they are in turn forcing a religious belief upon me and others who may wish to engage in this kind of activity. It is especially galling when the target of the activity (in this case the cartoon) is in fact directed toward other non-believers and is not being done explicitly make to flamebait or otherwise cause a reaction out of the believers.
As a Christian, I am particularly offended that in this case the Islamic faith is somehow being protected when in fact religious icons and symbols of Christianity are routinely depicted in a negative light as well and are not similarly protected. Perhaps it is a valid point where something which is held as sacred should be respected in some fashion and not trashed. This includes even symbols that are not overtly religious but are still held in some reverence such as a national flag. If Facebook is going to be consistent here, at least set up some general and broad policy that all sorts of similar symbols ought to be treated with respect. That isn't exactly an easy policy to implement nor enforce.
I certainly don't understand why death threats ought to be made over non-believers (or believers for that matter) making light of these things. When people make light of religious symbols which I consider important, I certainly am willing to grant them some latitude and don't necessarily get angry with them. I still am disappointed, but I wouldn't seek to harm somebody for doing that.
Stop trying to say Left-leaning people support this religious bullshit. I certainly don't.
Blar.
The question here is then if Facebook has become a "common carrier" and as such must take all forms of speech (including offensive kinds of speech) or if they are exercising editorial control over their content. Once you accept that you are engaging in editorial control, you need to make editorial decisions about all content.... something I think Facebook would have some trouble with.
Facebook then becomes liable for everything which is posted on its site and written about on their site. That is a situation which most sane people would not want to be in and that having the status of common carrier is preferable. That requires permitting speech that can from time to time be offensive.
The only thing that was a problem with the depiction of Mohammed is the topic and subject, not the method or manner in which somebody is depcited.
i agree 100% with you that economic development, education, and healthcare are far more important than rabble rousing
however, what i see that you don't is that if those issues are ever going to be addressed, it will be done by YOU
you are the majority? then you solve your problems in muslim communities. do you want to know why the muslim world has the problems you dislike? i'll tell you why:
"Almost all Muslims (both in the "West" and in the "East") have no beef with anyone or anything, and just want to go ahead living their lives."
no, you can't go on living your life. you are part of the problem BECAUSE YOU DON'T SOLVE THE PROBLEMS IN YOUR COMMUNITY
you don't have the right to just go on living your life. you have the RESPONSIBILITY to clean up your community. if that doesn't cdome first, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GO ON WITH YOUR LIFE UNMOLESTED. not by the west, but by the lunatics in your own community. clean them up!
if the demagogues are in charge, it is because the majority, you, let them be
you are to blame. because you don't understand this IS your problem
as the obvious reciprocal corollary, as an american i loathe gw bush and the tea party morons with every fibre of my being for being the ignorant propagandized sheep they are. and i will do my best to make sure these crackpots and assholes do not get power in my country again
now i am asking you to say the same about your lunatics
and if we fail, god save us. if we are the moderate middle in this world, it is our responsibility to keep the keys of power out of the hands of the stupid and the evil, in BOTH our communities. and if we don't, god save us all, because it is nothing but suffering for all of us
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What? Free speech sometimes means offending people! You don't support all free speech, you don't support free speech at all! What's next? Should Slashdot automatically delete this post for calling you out as the freedom-hating douche-bag you are?
Do you think I'm being deliberately offensive? The words you have said here are much more offensive than mine. But I haven't been dishonest by covering up my harsh words with flowery language. You don't want to protect people from offense, you want to prevent people from openly expressing their honest opinions in favor of your sanitized version of communication.
If you truly dislike fundamentalism of any stripe, it would be nice to see that claim backed by political actions. Batshit crazy Christian fundamentalism very rarely surfaces these days in terms of actual laws, but large sections of the world live under Islamic law that is unchanged since the middle ages.
Christian fundies are a bit backwards perhaps when it comes to women's rughts (if you see abortion that way), but Islamic fundies savagely punish rape victims for being sluts and this is law in many countries. Christian fundies are against gay marriage, but Islamic fundies punish homosexuality with death and this is law in many countries. Alcohol, pornography, I could go on.
Islamic fundies are vastly worse in each area that Christian fundies are annoying about, and are agressively moving to impose thier mindset worldwide. Holy War has been declared on Western liberal culture, but Western liberals seem too conflicted over "tolerance" to fight back. If you've ever said "be tolerant of everything but intolerance" you're being called out on that right now!
Where is the opposition from the left to the celebratory mosque being built overlooking the 9/11 site? Why does the left go apeshit over any suggestion that any counter-terrorism activities ever focus primarily on muslims? The other side isn't at all conflicted over "tolerance", as the facebook debacle clearly shows.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why the cheap shot against the "left"? You could say I'm a "leftie" (especially by US standards), and I'm pissed off by this.
Because there has been an internal division among the left (of which I consider myself a proud member) about the limits of free speech. Some openly deride the value of free speech in favor of hate speech laws, campus/employer speech codes[3][5], laws prohibiting "defaming or insulting religion"[6]. Outside the US, there appears to be no limit to prosecutions for even trivial insults against Christianity[1] or Islam[2]. In a most bizarre ruling from Canada, apparently you can be sued for libel for calling someone an 'enemy of free speech' in response the plaintiff's initiation of various cases before the CHRC that were, in fact, attacks on speech[4].
Slashdot has a particular brand of leftism that is largely against these attacks on free speech but it would be silly to think that this represents a worldwide view. There are significant attacks on free speech from the left (and, as always, from the right as well on different issues) and it would behoove us to pay attention and confront our fellow lefties that are clamoring for European-style (or even Canadian-style) regulations of 'hate speech' and the like.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/atheist-given-asbo-for-leaflets-mocking-jesus-1952985.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Geert_Wilders
[3] http://volokh.com/tag/rodriguez-v-maricopa/
[4] http://www.nelligan.ca/e/PDF/Warman_Court_Decision.pdf
[5] http://www.tuftsdaily.com/2.5511/csl-hearing-turns-spotlight-on-controversial-source-pieces-1.590986
[6] http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/combating_defamation_of_religions/
Probably you moderate Muslims should stop being so passive, stop hiding and reclaim your religion from the loonies that hijacked it.
Disappearing every time the crazies go insane is the last thing you should do.
Take the responsibility of your beliefs and confront the crazies, as a Muslim you are in a better position to do it than anyone else.
Why is it that showing pictures of a 7th-century pedophile who started a death cult is somehow "offensive"? The whole fucking religion is OFFENSIVE to anyone sane anyways...
I am a Muslim and completely agree with what you said. The irony is that the Prophet was maligned, harmed and thrown stones upon, his response was always peace but the Muslims who claim to be defending the Prophet actually abuse people on facebook pages and forums. The question I ask is this. Does any of this result in something constructive? I don't think so, I have seen more people uttering bad words, being violent (which by the way is un-islamic). So what is the point? If the Prophet was alive today, he would never even heed to these things. I do acknowledge that as a Muslim I get offended about such things, but there is a way to express one's views. Most of the Muslims today do not think about the outcome of what they are doing. I think that banning these websites actually spreads it out more, because people who had never even known about it would come to know of it. We as Muslims have let a bunch of people get hold of the leadership of our countries and they are doing nothing for us. They just gobble up more money and deprive people of their basic necessities. The biggest Jihad is to stand against these Muslim leaders and demand our rights. If we as a people unite, these leaders cannot do anything. We have inflicted the current situation upon ourselves, by letting them take hold of our freedom.
You were doing fine up until this:
celebratory? It is a mosque and a community center. Saying "celebratory" implies the people building the mosque are celebrating 9/11 and the death of over 3,000 Americans. This is untrue and needlessly inflammatory. It seriously weakens your otherwise solid post.