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Bans Prompt Facebook to Pull 'Everybody Draw Mohammed' Page

by Amar Toor on May 31, 2010 at 12:01 PM

Facebook lockdownFollowing Pakistan's lead, authorities in Bangladesh recently decided to block access to Facebook, on the grounds that the social networking site contains "objectionable" content about both the Prophet Mohammad and the country's own political officials. According to CNET, chief telecommunications regulator Zia Ahmed has requested that all Internet providers block the site, until a page publicizing 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' is taken down. And apparently, it worked.

Today, the social network finally ceded to protests from both Pakistan and Bangladesh, and removed the controversial page. As the AP reports, Facebook officials assured the Pakistani government that "nothing of this sort will happen in the future," prompting the country to restore access to the site.

The move comes as a sharp contrast to the stance Facebook initially took on the issue, when officials from the social network publicly maintained that the page titled 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!' did not violate the site's terms of use, and thus could not be justifiably censored. Najibullah Malik, the secretary of Pakistan's IT ministry, said that the government would continue to block what he referred to as "sacrilegious material," though he declined to elaborate on what kinds of content or media would fall under this umbrella. It's not yet clear whether or not Bangladesh will immediately open up Facebook, although based on its publicly stated position, it seems imminent.

The 'Draw Mohammed' page, from its incipience, was doomed to accomplish nothing substantive. Whether its creators initially set out to incite a worldwide paradigm shift in how the global media addresses Islam, or whether they simply wanted to raise awareness among free speech advocates, the means with which they pursued their agenda were woefully incompatible with healthy dialogue. Beneath all the bravado and defiant rhetoric is an intelligent debate that could've been better cultivated within a different context. But the page and its myopic slant only fueled anger, protests and antagonism, in much the same way that any intrinsically hateful forum would fan the flames of hostility.

We're lucky enough to be able to engage freely in this conversation, but we should never confuse that freedom with a license to tell other sovereign nations how to govern their own civil liberties. Most of us can't envision a life without free, online access to everything and anything we want. People in other parts of the world, however, have decidedly different priorities. And it's encouraging that Facebook, at least, has finally acknowledged them. [From: CNET, AP/HuffingtonPost and Reuters]

UPDATE: According to BusinessWeek, Facebook will reportedly block the page exclusively for users in Pakistan. In a telephone interview, Chaudhry Zulfiqar, the lawyer who originally requested that the social network take down the page, said, "The counsel for the state provided documents showing correspondence between the Facebook management and Richard Holbrooke. According to those documents, Facebook assured the court no blasphemous material will be available to users in Pakistan." Facebook, meanwhile, has yet to issue an official statement.

Tags: bangladesh, cartoon, everybody draw mohammed, EverybodyDrawMohammed, facebook, freedom, freedom of speech, FreedomOfSpeech, islam, islamic law, IslamicLaw, mohammad, Mohammed, political humor, PoliticalCartoon, PoliticalHumor, politics, socialnetworking, top, web

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