INTRODUCTION:
In May 2010, on the call of cartoonist Molly Noris, an international drawing contest took place on the community based social networking website “Facebook” with the title “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” (Nauzbillah min zalik).
• According to wikipedia, “Observance of the day began with a drawing posted on the internet on April 20, 2010, accompanied by text suggesting that “everybody” create a drawing representing Muhammad, on May 20, 2010, as a protest against efforts to limit freedom of speech” (1)
• According to news.oneindia.in, “As of May19, more than 41,000 Facebook users associated themselves to one page dedicated to the event, and a similar page was ‘liked’ by at least 4,400 users.” (2)
• Moreover, it was also mentioned on the above website that, “A Facebook spokesman told FoxNews.com it has no plans to censor any of the pages associated with the campaign or counter-campaign, though threats will be removed.” (2)
• According to rferl.org, “The ‘Everybody draw Muhammad Day’ event on Facebook, organized by a group bearing the same name, attracted 80,000 members for its May 20 online campaign, resulting in more than 4000 cartoons being uploaded on the site.”(3) (Astaghfirullah!!!)
• According to Jakarta Post, “As of Wednesday evening, more than 41,300 people liked the group (4) and others with similar purposes have been created including ‘Can a million people draw Muhammad before I’m killed for this group’ and ‘Draw the Prophet Muhammad Group!’” (5)
• According to wikiislam.net, “The Facebook page Everybody Draw Muhammad Day! has over 100,000 people who are fans of it.” (6)
• “Europenews” had mentioned that this insolent group had about 80,000 members and 6,551 drawings were uploaded.(7) [Nauzbillah min Zalik!]
How much heartbreaking the event was! Previously a particular newspaper of a certain region used to publish couple of insulting cartoons but this time more than 6000 pictures were uploaded and moreover, this event was not a regional event, rather it was an international event to globally unite all the insolents of our beloved Prophet (Peace be upon him)!!! Indeed! It was such an event which never ever took in history before.
HOW FACEBOOK IS INVOLVED IN THIS ACT OF BLASPHEMY?
According to one website, Facebook lateron removed the blasphemous page in Pakistan and other countries [i.e. Facebook restricted the access to the controversial page in limited countries and not in all the countries] (8) but it is also an admitted fact that;
• Facebook acted as a platform for the unity of more than one lac insolents (Gustakhaan-e-Rasool).
• Facebook not only provided them an opportunity of blasphemy but also supported their heinous mission.
• Above in introduction, I have mentioned that the spokesman of Facebook rejected to censor any of the pages of this campaign. (2)
• In couple of websites, it is clearly mentioned that a number of people reported this hearbreaking event to the officials of Facebook and requested them to completely ban it but Facebook official didn’t acted on their request. According to Propakistani.pk, “’Draw Muhammad Day’ was reported by atleast 35,000 Facebook users, however, page is still alive- giving a page a direct support.” (9) which ultimately resulted in such depressing results which were unbearable by Muslim
Ummah.
• Muslims continuously protested against this blasphemous group but Facebook turned deaf ears towards their cry and when every thing was over then Facebook decided to restrict this page in selected (i.e. not all) countries of the world.
• This is the same Facebook which removed couple of Pro-Islamic pages including “Logo.Ramadan”, “Rasul.Allah”, “Quran.Lovers” and “Love. Muhammad” (11) but on the other hand supported that blasphemous group.
• Moreover, it is also an admitted fact that this page was working against the policies of Facebook. According to Propakistani.pk, “The page is clearly violating the terms, by spreading hatred and disrespecting Muslims and their values.” But still Facebook allowed it to proceed and to gather insolents from all over the world. (12 & 9), while on the other hand, on the request of Israel Media Minister, Facebook removed the page that was in the favor of Palestine. (13).
• As I mentioned above, that this kind of blasphemy contest never took place before in the history and thus Facebook paved a path towards giving a new idea of blasphemy to the enemies of Islam.
• Moreover, this act also inspired couple of other insolent webmasters resulting in the creation of other blasphemous websites. http://everyonedrawmohammed.blogspot.com is an open example in this regard which has a list of over 25 web addresses of those websites or pages who took part in this blasphemous contest.
• According to one website, “one of facebook employee is admin of this event.” (14) While according to another website, “For instance one may think that it may be Facebook it self! And why not, while controversy will result in clicks, impressions, visits to this page making them earn more as well as investment for future.” (15). Anyhow this might
not be true that Facebook actually created this page but it is an admitted fact that Facebook not only provided them an opportunity for this blasphemous act but also acted as a platform and also supported their heinous mission and impliedly rejected to remove their group / page and showed no intention towards removing their group / page inspite of violation of their policies and reporting by thousands of users which ultimately resulted in above mentioned heartbreaking results.
One person named “Aamir ataa” writes in its article, “Facebook is bone of contention: Because its only the Facebook that could create such an impact. With power, there was responsibility on Facebook, which it never met. If Facebook had banned the Draw Mohammad page, in early days – none of this could have happened” (15)
MUSLIM UMMAH ---- AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF REVENUE AND PROFIT OF FACEBOOK:
(The below statistics were compiled in 2011)
• Facebook is very much popular among Muslim Ummah. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world while the ranking of Indonesia with regards to the amount of users on Facebook is 2nd. According to the analysis of one website, there are 39568620 Indonesian Facebook users (16). Similarly, there are 5135220 Pakistani Facebook users (17). While in Turkey, there are 29951960 people who use facebook. (18)
• One can estimate the amount of Muslim Facebook users from the fact that about 2.5 Million people were associated with just 4 Islamic Pages on Facebook which were later on removed by Facebook officials (19).
• A renowned Islamic Scholar Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani Sahab told in his bayan (lecture) that, “Someone told him that whoever login to facebook, he gives a benefit of 2.5 dollar to facebook.” (21)
• According to one website, Muslims are generating 47% of total revenue of facebook (22), while one Pakistani website claims the figure to be 50% (23)
• According to one Arabic website, “Facebook is angering its Muslim population who make now a big portion of its members.” (25)
• One Pakistani youngster estimated to find out the loss suffered by facebook due to 10 days boycott by Pakistani users. Accordiing to his estimates, facebook suffered a direct loss of $242,280 just only from Pakistani users during 10 days boycott. (26)
• One of the Pakistani eminent journalist and news anchor Javed Chaudry also gave the news of financial loss of Facebook that she suffered due to boycott done by Muslims from all over the world in his talk show “Kal Tak”.
• According to one website, Facebook generates $5,631,281,29 (Rs. 461, 765, 066, 16 /- ) of revenue only from Pakistani users per annum. While Facebook receives $517,000,000 from Muslim users all over the world. (27)
Therefore, it is clearly evident that Facebook generates a huge amount of revenue from Muslim users and Muslims are an important source of income of Facebook. And thus to use Facebook means to give a financial and moral support to Facebook while on the other hand this fact also indicates that the a permanent boycott made by the entire Muslim Ummah can easily devastate and destroy their economy in no time (Insha’Allah subhana wa ta’aala).
Morover, it is also crystal clear that Facebook has shown hatred against Islam and Muslims number of times and has supported Anti-Islamic tasks and pages.
REFERENCES:
1- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day
2-http://news.oneindia.in/2010/05/20/everybodydraw-mohammed-day-triggers-facebookrow.html
3-http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Administrator_Says_Draw_Muhammad_Day_Facebook_Group_Decided_To_Draw_The_Line/2049411.html
4-http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/05/20/info-ministry-set-send-protest-letter-facebook.html
5- http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/05/20/info-ministry-set-send-protest-letter-facebook.html
6-http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day
7-http://europenews.dk/en/node/32286
8-http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/17/zuckerberg_faces_criminal_investigation_in_pakistan/
9-propakistani.pk/2010/05/19/blasphemy-why-facebook-is-culprit-and-how-best-to-react/
11-Muslimvillage.com:
http://muslimvillage.com/2010/07/17/2-5-million-muslim-users-threaten-mass-facebook-exodus
12-http://propakistani.pk/2010/05/19/blasphemy-why-facebook-is-culprit-and-how-best-to-react/
13-http://arabcrunch.com/2011/04/over-a-quarter-million-users-boycotted-facebook-for-1-day-in-response-for-deleting-t
he-third-palestinian-intifada-page.html
14-http://www.buzzpk.com/how-and-why-to-boycott-facebook/
15-http://propakistani.pk/2010/05/19/blasphemy-why-facebook-is-culprit-and-how-best-to-react/
16-http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/indonesia
17-http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/pakistan
18-http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/turkey
19-Muslimvillage.com:
http://muslimvillage.com/2010/07/17/2-5-million-muslim-users-threaten-mass-facebook-exodus
20-http://ugandamuslims.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/a-global-appeal-to-muslims/
21- Book: Naamoos-e-Risalat ki hifazat kijye (Maulana Mufti Muhammad
Taqi Usmani Sahab) Compiled by: Muhammad Abdullah Maiman
22- http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/boycott-facebook/
23- The Pakistani paper The Express Tribune, an affiliate of the
International Herald Tribune ( &)
techie-buzz.com/tech-news/pakistanis-launch-muslim-facebook-called-millat-facebook.html
24- www.3arn.net/my-take-on-the-facebook-boycott/
25- http://arabcrunch.com/2011/03/facebook-deletes-free-palestine-page.html
26- http://www.3arn.net/was-the-facebook-boycott-any-good/
27- http://www.bjsallahwalay.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/boycott-facebook.jpg
In May 2010, on the call of cartoonist Molly Noris, an international drawing contest took place on the community based social networking website “Facebook” with the title “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” (Nauzbillah min zalik).
• According to wikipedia, “Observance of the day began with a drawing posted on the internet on April 20, 2010, accompanied by text suggesting that “everybody” create a drawing representing Muhammad, on May 20, 2010, as a protest against efforts to limit freedom of speech” (1)
• According to news.oneindia.in, “As of May19, more than 41,000 Facebook users associated themselves to one page dedicated to the event, and a similar page was ‘liked’ by at least 4,400 users.” (2)
• Moreover, it was also mentioned on the above website that, “A Facebook spokesman told FoxNews.com it has no plans to censor any of the pages associated with the campaign or counter-campaign, though threats will be removed.” (2)
• According to rferl.org, “The ‘Everybody draw Muhammad Day’ event on Facebook, organized by a group bearing the same name, attracted 80,000 members for its May 20 online campaign, resulting in more than 4000 cartoons being uploaded on the site.”(3) (Astaghfirullah!!!)
• According to Jakarta Post, “As of Wednesday evening, more than 41,300 people liked the group (4) and others with similar purposes have been created including ‘Can a million people draw Muhammad before I’m killed for this group’ and ‘Draw the Prophet Muhammad Group!’” (5)
• According to wikiislam.net, “The Facebook page Everybody Draw Muhammad Day! has over 100,000 people who are fans of it.” (6)
• “Europenews” had mentioned that this insolent group had about 80,000 members and 6,551 drawings were uploaded.(7) [Nauzbillah min Zalik!]
How much heartbreaking the event was! Previously a particular newspaper of a certain region used to publish couple of insulting cartoons but this time more than 6000 pictures were uploaded and moreover, this event was not a regional event, rather it was an international event to globally unite all the insolents of our beloved Prophet (Peace be upon him)!!! Indeed! It was such an event which never ever took in history before.
HOW FACEBOOK IS INVOLVED IN THIS ACT OF BLASPHEMY?
According to one website, Facebook lateron removed the blasphemous page in Pakistan and other countries [i.e. Facebook restricted the access to the controversial page in limited countries and not in all the countries] (8) but it is also an admitted fact that;
• Facebook acted as a platform for the unity of more than one lac insolents (Gustakhaan-e-Rasool).
• Facebook not only provided them an opportunity of blasphemy but also supported their heinous mission.
• Above in introduction, I have mentioned that the spokesman of Facebook rejected to censor any of the pages of this campaign. (2)
• In couple of websites, it is clearly mentioned that a number of people reported this hearbreaking event to the officials of Facebook and requested them to completely ban it but Facebook official didn’t acted on their request. According to Propakistani.pk, “’Draw Muhammad Day’ was reported by atleast 35,000 Facebook users, however, page is still alive- giving a page a direct support.” (9) which ultimately resulted in such depressing results which were unbearable by Muslim
Ummah.
• Muslims continuously protested against this blasphemous group but Facebook turned deaf ears towards their cry and when every thing was over then Facebook decided to restrict this page in selected (i.e. not all) countries of the world.
• This is the same Facebook which removed couple of Pro-Islamic pages including “Logo.Ramadan”, “Rasul.Allah”, “Quran.Lovers” and “Love. Muhammad” (11) but on the other hand supported that blasphemous group.
• Moreover, it is also an admitted fact that this page was working against the policies of Facebook. According to Propakistani.pk, “The page is clearly violating the terms, by spreading hatred and disrespecting Muslims and their values.” But still Facebook allowed it to proceed and to gather insolents from all over the world. (12 & 9), while on the other hand, on the request of Israel Media Minister, Facebook removed the page that was in the favor of Palestine. (13).
• As I mentioned above, that this kind of blasphemy contest never took place before in the history and thus Facebook paved a path towards giving a new idea of blasphemy to the enemies of Islam.
• Moreover, this act also inspired couple of other insolent webmasters resulting in the creation of other blasphemous websites. http://everyonedrawmohammed.blogspot.com is an open example in this regard which has a list of over 25 web addresses of those websites or pages who took part in this blasphemous contest.
• According to one website, “one of facebook employee is admin of this event.” (14) While according to another website, “For instance one may think that it may be Facebook it self! And why not, while controversy will result in clicks, impressions, visits to this page making them earn more as well as investment for future.” (15). Anyhow this might
not be true that Facebook actually created this page but it is an admitted fact that Facebook not only provided them an opportunity for this blasphemous act but also acted as a platform and also supported their heinous mission and impliedly rejected to remove their group / page and showed no intention towards removing their group / page inspite of violation of their policies and reporting by thousands of users which ultimately resulted in above mentioned heartbreaking results.
One person named “Aamir ataa” writes in its article, “Facebook is bone of contention: Because its only the Facebook that could create such an impact. With power, there was responsibility on Facebook, which it never met. If Facebook had banned the Draw Mohammad page, in early days – none of this could have happened” (15)
MUSLIM UMMAH ---- AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF REVENUE AND PROFIT OF FACEBOOK:
(The below statistics were compiled in 2011)
• Facebook is very much popular among Muslim Ummah. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world while the ranking of Indonesia with regards to the amount of users on Facebook is 2nd. According to the analysis of one website, there are 39568620 Indonesian Facebook users (16). Similarly, there are 5135220 Pakistani Facebook users (17). While in Turkey, there are 29951960 people who use facebook. (18)
• One can estimate the amount of Muslim Facebook users from the fact that about 2.5 Million people were associated with just 4 Islamic Pages on Facebook which were later on removed by Facebook officials (19).
• A renowned Islamic Scholar Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani Sahab told in his bayan (lecture) that, “Someone told him that whoever login to facebook, he gives a benefit of 2.5 dollar to facebook.” (21)
• According to one website, Muslims are generating 47% of total revenue of facebook (22), while one Pakistani website claims the figure to be 50% (23)
• According to one Arabic website, “Facebook is angering its Muslim population who make now a big portion of its members.” (25)
• One Pakistani youngster estimated to find out the loss suffered by facebook due to 10 days boycott by Pakistani users. Accordiing to his estimates, facebook suffered a direct loss of $242,280 just only from Pakistani users during 10 days boycott. (26)
• One of the Pakistani eminent journalist and news anchor Javed Chaudry also gave the news of financial loss of Facebook that she suffered due to boycott done by Muslims from all over the world in his talk show “Kal Tak”.
• According to one website, Facebook generates $5,631,281,29 (Rs. 461, 765, 066, 16 /- ) of revenue only from Pakistani users per annum. While Facebook receives $517,000,000 from Muslim users all over the world. (27)
Therefore, it is clearly evident that Facebook generates a huge amount of revenue from Muslim users and Muslims are an important source of income of Facebook. And thus to use Facebook means to give a financial and moral support to Facebook while on the other hand this fact also indicates that the a permanent boycott made by the entire Muslim Ummah can easily devastate and destroy their economy in no time (Insha’Allah subhana wa ta’aala).
Morover, it is also crystal clear that Facebook has shown hatred against Islam and Muslims number of times and has supported Anti-Islamic tasks and pages.
REFERENCES:
1- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day
2-http://news.oneindia.in/2010/05/20/everybodydraw-mohammed-day-triggers-facebookrow.html
3-http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Administrator_Says_Draw_Muhammad_Day_Facebook_Group_Decided_To_Draw_The_Line/2049411.html
4-http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/05/20/info-ministry-set-send-protest-letter-facebook.html
5- http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/05/20/info-ministry-set-send-protest-letter-facebook.html
6-http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day
7-http://europenews.dk/en/node/32286
8-http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/17/zuckerberg_faces_criminal_investigation_in_pakistan/
9-propakistani.pk/2010/05/19/blasphemy-why-facebook-is-culprit-and-how-best-to-react/
11-Muslimvillage.com:
http://muslimvillage.com/2010/07/17/2-5-million-muslim-users-threaten-mass-facebook-exodus
12-http://propakistani.pk/2010/05/19/blasphemy-why-facebook-is-culprit-and-how-best-to-react/
13-http://arabcrunch.com/2011/04/over-a-quarter-million-users-boycotted-facebook-for-1-day-in-response-for-deleting-t
he-third-palestinian-intifada-page.html
14-http://www.buzzpk.com/how-and-why-to-boycott-facebook/
15-http://propakistani.pk/2010/05/19/blasphemy-why-facebook-is-culprit-and-how-best-to-react/
16-http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/indonesia
17-http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/pakistan
18-http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/turkey
19-Muslimvillage.com:
http://muslimvillage.com/2010/07/17/2-5-million-muslim-users-threaten-mass-facebook-exodus
20-http://ugandamuslims.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/a-global-appeal-to-muslims/
21- Book: Naamoos-e-Risalat ki hifazat kijye (Maulana Mufti Muhammad
Taqi Usmani Sahab) Compiled by: Muhammad Abdullah Maiman
22- http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/boycott-facebook/
23- The Pakistani paper The Express Tribune, an affiliate of the
International Herald Tribune ( &)
techie-buzz.com/tech-news/pakistanis-launch-muslim-facebook-called-millat-facebook.html
24- www.3arn.net/my-take-on-the-facebook-boycott/
25- http://arabcrunch.com/2011/03/facebook-deletes-free-palestine-page.html
26- http://www.3arn.net/was-the-facebook-boycott-any-good/
27- http://www.bjsallahwalay.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/boycott-facebook.jpg