Facebook faces Islamic backlash
Facebook is facing up to a backlash from Islamic extremists after the prolific social networking site became embroiled in a legal tussle with a Pakistani court.
The fracas has come to a head today (May 20th) which is the unofficial “Everyone Draw Muhammed Day”, a “snarky” initiative set up by irate South park fans, angered at censorship of their favourite show for depicting Islam’s holiest figure in a bear suit.
Facebook has proven to be the platform of choice for an army of 83,398 (and counting) budding Mohammed artists, to the consternation of Lahore High Court which judges visual representation of the prophet to be “blasphemous”. It has ordered the government to block the site till May 31 pending further action.
Denying any intent to cause offence the page administrator stressed that the site was intended to be “humorous” and that “hateful” images would be discouraged: “We are not trying to slander the average muslim, it's not a muslim/islam hatepage.
"We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammed depictions, that we're not afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us to silence.”
Facebook say they are “looking into” the allegations but after being offline temporarily the site is again live.