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.
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.
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!
For all of us that wanted to delete our FaceBook profile, but couldn't because FaceBook hides it and plays around with the options so that we cannot do it. Well, now you have the answer. Just put some pictures of Mohamed sodomizing some sheep or similar and voilá.
Perhaps thins is one of this new privacy options Zuckberg talks about. "It's now possible to delete your own personal page." (Big cheers from the public)."
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.
And even if I am offended (which I reserve the right to be), I don't think any of this should be happening (i.e., censorship). There has been defamatory material on the prophet for centuries, and in fact were around even during his time. This is nothing new; anyone as prominent as him had to have grown pretty thick skin to get anything done.
His followers 14 centuries on, however, can't seem to follow in his footsteps even half as much as they claim they do.
Every time something like this comes up, I try to dig a hole and disappear best I can. Yet another dysfunctional government like Bangladesh or Pakistan come up with a way to do their magical rabble-rousing and distract from the real issues at hand: economic development, education, and healthcare. All of which they are failing *miserably* at.
This is all *political*. 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. These idiots in government, who can't even ensure their citizens get basic utilities like garbage collection and electricity, are spending their energy on some drawings, which is perverse on multiple levels.
The minority here is basically speaking for the majority. And honestly... the majority (like me) are looking to dig their own holes as well. We don't want to stick our heads out because we don't want the confrontation. This isn't something we particularly care about. I honest to goodness don't want to argue about the merits and demerits of my faith with some of the slashdotters on here, who are convinced that Muslims "don't belong."
But someone's gotta say it. Most of us are not like this. Most of us just want to get on with our lives. Please don't let the vocal minority dominate the debate. This is political distraction tactics and has little or nothing to do with free speech, Facebook, or the prophet.
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!
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.