Following the growing “Islamophobia” in the world, spreading majorly through social media, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to ban Islamophobic content on Facebook.
Mr. Khan, after slamming the President of France over his speech “attacking Islam”, said in the open letter that the content might bring radicalization in Muslims if it isn’t taken down.
He pointed out the increasing hate and Islamophobia on social media platforms like Facebook that is giving way to extremism and global violence against Muslims, through his Sunday letter posted on Twitter.
Imran khan asked Facebook to put in place a similar ban on Islamophobic posts as is present for the Holocaust.
Expressing his disapproval of the CAA and NRC of India, he mentioned the “targeted killings of Muslims and blaming them for coronavirus” as has been done by politicians and publicized by others on social networking sites.
Furthermore, he took the example of France and its President who blatantly associated Islam with terrorism and allowed the publication of unacceptable cartoons on Prophet Mohammed.
Facebook is going to update its policies revolving around hate speech along with a ban on posts, which tried to change the episode of the Holocaust or denied its existence in history.
Highlighting the need for all hate speeches being dealt with equally for similar bans, Mr. Khan said, “One cannot send a message that while hate messages against some are unacceptable, these are acceptable against others.”
Responding to the letter, a spokeswoman of Facebook said their company does not support any sort of hate on the platform and also removes content that attacks people based on a person’s race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.
In the statement, she said the company will take down hate speech when they come across such content. She further said that Facebook had “more work to do” rather than keep a tab on such specific posts.
According to the most recent transparency report of Facebook, Pakistan stood second citing the most number of requests to remove content. The report covering the data of six months until 2019’s December showed Russia preceding Pakistan for curbing posts.
Reuters reported a source associated directly with the issue at hand that the majority of the requests for taking down Islamophobia and other Islam-related posts were received from Pakistan. This was also more than any number of requests coming from other Muslim-dominating countries.
Generally, Facebook is supposed to agree to the requests as not doing so would break the laws of Pakistan. The source also spoke about the many posts the authorities of the country would send to take them down in a short period of time.
Khan’s remarks on the French President Macron came after he paid respects to a French teacher, apparently killed by beheading by an Islamic extremist. The man allegedly took the step to take revenge on the cartoons he had created on Prophet Mohammed.
A Danish newspaper called Jyllands-Posten was the first to publish the cartoons on Prophet Mohammed in 2005. Since then, the topic has been extremely disturbing and sensitive to Muslims. This instigated the rise of protests in Pakistan and other countries on Islamophobia prevailing so publicly in the world, along with governments allowing them to do so.
Last month, Pakistan was flooded with people protesting over the same cartoons published by a French paper, Charlie Hebdo.
Turkey and Pakistan share a strong bond for staying on the same page on various subjects, especially the current one on Islamophobia and France.
However, Pakistan’s opposition parties have recently formed a partnership seeking to remove Mr. Khan and dissolve his power.
The government of Pakistan headed by Imran Khan has filtered many social media applications, banning a few of them as the authorities considered the content to be explicit or morally wrong.
