The Times of India is reporting that people in Pakistan of the Muslim faith are urging their fellow Muslims to use Millat Facebook. The reason being that Facebook is allegedly involved in blasphemy of the Holy Prophet (i.e. Muhammad).

Muslim leaders held a round table conference titled, “Blasphemy of Facebook and the Role of Muslim Youth on Social Media,” hosted by Millat Facebook. They slammed those in Pakistan who were advocating the abolishment or amendment to the current blasphemy laws.

The owners of Millat Facebook said that their site had seen a large amount of success since launching in May 2010. The site has suffered some setbacks, however, with U.S. and Pakistani authorities taking down its hosting. They said that U.S. officials had attacked them by threatening their hosts in the U.S. and Europe within a few months of opening.

What hurt them more, however, was that Pakistan’s national ISP refused to host the site. They also refused to explain their denial in writing.

He ended the talk by saying that Jewish and Christian groups had organized attacks on the Web site. The attackers invited people from all over the world to attack the “Muslim’s alternative to Facebook.” The team, however, stopped the attacks from ever happening.

It’s great to create social networking sites around particular religions so as not to offend people, but I don’t think the problem is with the site itself. If you look at the Web site, it’s an obvious theft of Facebook’s UI and design. They may want to change that to avoid any further legal troubles.

Original Article: Every now and then, someone spots an oddity in Google’s suggestions. Some are funny. Some are disturbing, and some are just weird. Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web has discovered an interesting behavior in Google Suggest involving religion.

With most major religions, you will get suggestions from Google when you type in a query like "example is". If you type "christianity is", or "judaism is" you will get suggestions (which some will no doubt find controversial in themselves), but when you type "islam is", you get nothing.

Here are a few screenshots for different examples of such queries:

To be fair, there are other religions that don’t yield suggestions, but all of the biggest ones besides Islam do.

The phenomenon has raised a few eyebrows. Wilhem himself says, "Google is systematically blocking, it seems, all search suggestions for Islam. Why? To remove the chance of an adherent of the faith from being offended by a perhaps severe search suggestion? Why not treat all search terms equally?"

He thinks that either "A: Google is horribly broken and this is evidence of that or B: They seem to be tampering with results."

Danny Sullivan, one of the most influential voices in the search industry weighed in on the conversation, saying, "Google is horribly broken. That’s my call. And they do such a piss poor job explaining why these types of things happen (sometimes not even trying at all) that it’s easier to believe B, that they’re tampering with search suggestions."

He points to a piece he wrote about Google Suggest and Climategate, "Many people are convinced that Google messed with the suggestions for that," says Sullivan. "Google was adamant they did not. I still believe they didn’t. I also can only tell you from covering Google over the years that things like this are far more likely to be because they are indeed screw ups than that they are intentionally aiming to do so."

A query for "islam is" returns about 3,140,000 results. Others have pointed out that there are no suggestions for queries like "Larry Page is" or "Sergey Brin is", although Sullivan is careful to point out that there are plenty for "Google is," and they’re not all the most positive things in the world.

What do you make of Google’s suggestions or lack thereof? Share your thoughts here.

Wilders made a name for himself with fierce anti-Islam rhetoric. His film, running 15 minutes and called “Fitna,” has spurred more criticism of the politician, who already lives under guard due to death threats made in response to his views.

More of those views and the controversy that follows them has Dutch broadcasters unwilling to broadcast Fitna. Wilders’ plan to distribute it online hit a snag when his hosting company, Network Solutions, pulled the domain offline.

A notice at fitnathemovie.com says:

This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation.

Given the film’s sensitive subject matter, European unrest over a growing Islamic population, and past violence that included the murder of another Dutch filmmaker for making a film about Islam’s treatment of women, Network Solutions may decide to give Wilders a refund and spare itself the potential pushback from hosting Fitna.

Though a Reuters report said Wilders plans to get the movie into people’s hands by pressing copies of a DVD into them if needed, the politician probably feels he is being censored for his views. If other hosting sites reject his video, Wilders may be right to believe this.

Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.

Currently, the Wikipedia page in question is protected from editing, meaning, according to Wikipedia, “editing on the page has been restricted to either registered users or administrators.”

[Thanks DPic!]

Comments

Jameel Theyabi, writing for Beruit-based Dar Al-Hayat, makes an impassioned plea to the Middle East to keep up with the times. His shining example of how great success can come from humble roots is Google.

He writes:

The rest of the world innovates in creating and applying knowledge to the best needs of times while we are busy applying it in excommunicating and attacking one another, as well as in condemning each other from behind the comfort of devilish aliases….

So stark is the contrast between the success story of the Google students and what they have offered to humanity in the service of science, knowledge, and intellect on the one hand, and the contributions of Mullah Omar’s students, the Taliban, or Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden in terms of murder, destruction, terrorism, and defamation of Islam.

Theyabi’s appeal seems directed at Muslim youth, often tapped for extremist actions. Instead, Theyabi says they should be applying their minds to new technologies and new ways of thinking to right their course in history.

It must be bittersweet, then, that another article proves his point: The wrong side is using said technology to further its cause. Supporters of Al-Qaeda leader Abu Sayyaf have successfully raised funds via a YouTube campaign, according an article published at MonstersAndCritics.com.

Manila police say Sayyaf enjoyed a spike in funding shortly after the Internet campaign, and police are on high alert against the threat of "bomb attacks ‘to inflict mass casualties.’"

Theyabi’s plea may be late in coming, but few would argue that it is too late.   

Facebook Islam Row Highlights Free Speech Issues

And at times, that line can be as thin as the line between art and pornography.

Yet, here we are creating user-generated societies within corporately-provided bubbles without any clear delineation of what is tolerable. What is tolerable is determined by mobs and, less often, lawyers who will pull this out into the real world if necessary.

I’m certainly not one to judge the content of the Facebook group mentioned in this New York Times article with 750 members with the stated goal denouncing not only Islam and the Quran, but also the existence of God. There may have been other potentially objectionable statements made.

But another group, which grew 58,000 members strong by the weekend, threatened to cancel their Facebook memberships if the anti-Islamic group wasn’t removed.

What to do, what to do? A representative of the targeted group said Facebook deleted the account – briefly. They most likely realized the freedom of speech quagmire they were about to enter and changed their mind. Facebook didn’t have a comment, so we may never know.

But it highlights a growing issue as the Internet creates a more connected world and as people with any number of opinions cross paths, and they (gasp!) have to learn to deal with each other.

Some of those opinions will be hateful. The terms of use for using websites warn against hate speech, but who is the line judge eyeballing between anger and hate?

Is it the Middle East Media Research Institute, who’ve been keeping a close eye on all the mean things said about Islam and Muhammad on YouTube? Are YouTubers allowed to call Islam a "sucky, pathetic religion"? Is it hate speech to give "Seven reasons why Islam is crazy"?

Those sound more like strong opinions than hate speech. But I’m not a judge. And I don’t necessarily want to be. I’m just not sure, in this case, if you substituted "Christianity," "Mormonism," or "Wicca," you could label it anything other than religious commentary. But because it involves Islam – or it involved Judaism – it would be slapped around into the hate speech zone, at least for a little while.

The point is one I’ve tried to make before – when YouTube yanked videos at the request of foreign interests, when AT&T muted Eddie Vedder, when Google let China have its way them – that there is no freedom of speech on the Internet so long as the platforms for speech are provided by private companies dancing to the demands of the largest market.

This is not – repeat is not, before commentators below and on blogs start calling me a liberal communist pig – a call for central government control of the Internet – just, perhaps, some guarantee out there, via Net Neutrality or through the various Bills of Rights that have been proposed, that people will retain their right to speech even in digital forums, terms of service and angry mobs be damned.

We should be allowed to say what we want to say.

Gisburne is a self-described atheist with, at least from the one video, a deep questioning of Muslim claims about the Koran. To express his doubts about Islam being a religion of peace, Gisburne created a 10-minute video, entitled "Islamic Teachings" that was nothing but violent quotations taken from the Koran instructing followers to kill nonbelievers and speed their way to Hell where Allah will torture them forever.

It would seem quoting the holy book in a sort of testament against itself was over the line for someone working at Google-owned YouTube. Not only was the video deleted without any type of warning to the uploader, but the uploader’s account was also deleted with only the explanation (or accusation) of submitting inappropriate content, a category usually reserved for nudity or video violence.

Gisburne can be seen talking about the experience here, in a very monotone way. But the video in question can still be found on YouTube, for as word spreads about the rather obvious free speech infringement, users by the dozens have become defiant, posting it on Gisburne’s behalf.

Over at Xooglers, a blog written by ex-Google employees, Ron Garret says this doesn’t reflect well on Google:

This really bothers me for four reasons. First, to deem quotations from a holy text to be "inappropriate content" is outrageous on its face. Second, Gisburne was given no warning. Third, YouTube didn’t just delete the video in question, they deleted Gisburne’s entire account. And fourth, this makes a mockery of Google’s "don’t be evil" slogan. There can be no possible reason for this action other than caving to intimidation, and sanctimonious cowardice in the face of oppression is a particularly pernicious breed of evil.

He advises other angry free speech advocates to contact YouTube to express themselves directly.

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