Pakistani Prime Minister and former cricketer, Imran Khan, has written an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking for a ban on Islamophobic content on Facebook. The Prime Minister said that Facebook should clamp down on Islamophobia as hard as it does with Holocaust denial.
As things stand right now, Facebook does include Islamophobia as hate speech and is against the platform’s community standards, however, Khan highlighted that cartoons had been allowed to be posted on Facebook without repercussions despite being viewed as blasphemous in Islam - Khan called it Islamophobic.
My letter to CEO Facebook Mark Zuckerberg to ban Islamophobia just as Facebook has banned questioning or criticising the holocaust. pic.twitter.com/mCMnz9kxcj
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) October 25, 2020
In his letter, Prime Minister Khan said:
“Dear Mr. Zuckerberg, I am writing to draw your attention to the growing Islamophobia that is encouraging hate, extremism and violence across the world and especially through the use of social media platforms including Facebook. … The message of hate must be banned in total.”
The Pakistani government has been focused a lot on social media in the last several weeks. Earlier in the week, the government reversed its TikTok ban after initially raising concerns about “immoral” content. The block was lifted after the Chinese firm gave assurance to Pakistan’s government that it would ban immoral content. While Khan didn’t mention blocking Facebook if it did not act, there is precedence for a future ban.