Tarek Fatah, Islamic State and censorship in the times of Facebook

In the beginning of November, Tarek Fatah shared on his Facebook page a video that claimed to show how the terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS) committed war crimes against its prisoners of war. Fatah, a known critic of Islamist jihadists and the IS, had ironically found the video on another Facebook page. Although the video did not contain any footage of beheadings, he still posted it with a warning, advising viewer discretion. Soon after he posted the video, he received a notice from the social networking site, saying that he had violated Facebook’s “ community standards”, he recalled on Tuesday in his column titled ‘ Why would Facebook censor me?’ for the Canadian newspaper, The Toronto Sun. [caption id=“attachment_2496500” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] He goes on to write that he tried to reach Facebook in many different ways but he only got a response when he tweeted at them. Even then, they did not address the decision to block Fatah’s page and their reply was of “little comfort to me,” he wrote. “There is something wrong with Facebook’s “community standards” if terrorists can communicate freely, but a Muslim fighting Islamism and jihadi terrorism cannot,” he wrote. On the day the column was published, Facebook’s spokesperson told the newspaper that blocking Fatah was a mistake and he is allowed to set up a new account. Following the same community standards, on 23 November, Facebook removed the news page called Khalifah News following a complaint by the news website, Foreign Desk News. Initially, Facebook refused to do so, according to Foreign Desk News, even though the page described itself as disseminating “official material published by the Islamic State”. However, upon reviewing their community standards, which states that the site will not tolerate pages that promote hatred towards any religious group, Facebook took down the Khalifah News page, reports Breitbart.com. Meanwhile, confusion reigned earlier this month for a few hours when Isis Anchalee, an engineer based in San Francisco, found that her Facebook account had been frozen. She tweeted at the networking site, saying that it’s her real name and she has nothing to do with the terrorist organisation, Islamic State, reports The Guardian. She even sent the site a copy of her passport to prove her name is authentic. Facebook responded and reinstated her account. A spokesperson told The Guardian that her account was blocked because of a “fake reporting process” but it had nothing to do with her name being similar to the acronym of the terrorist organisation. This is among the many issues that Tarek Fatah will be discussing at today’s Firstpost Salon , starting at 6 pm. Don’t miss it!