Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan just called out Facebook to stop the spread of violent and Islamophobic content on the social platform. The reaction of the PM was in response to the French President’s recent Islamophobic behavior.
President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to an Islamist murderer of a French teacher last week, after which the French ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to give a diplomatic protest against the President’s problematic remarks.
Khan posted an open letter on Twitter this Sunday, expressing his resentment over increasing Islamophobia and extremism and the role of social platforms like Facebook in the spread of such content.
The letter talked about the situation in France where, Khan said, Islam was being associated with terrorism. He called out the French president for ‘'attacking Islam’' by encouraging the display of cartoons of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.
Khan demanded a ban on Islamophobic content from Facebook the same way Facebook decided to put a ban on anti-Holocaust content. He added that Facebook's stance was reflective of prejudice and bias that would give rise to further radicalization.
A Facebook spokesperson has responded to Khan’s statement, saying that Facebook is against all kinds of hate and violent attacks directed at race, ethnicity, and religion. She further added that the company will work on deleting the content as soon as it becomes aware of it.
The latest transparency report of Facebook shows that among requests to curb content on the platform, Pakistan was on the second highest number after Russia. The most requests for removal of Islamophobic content came from Pakistan as compared to other Muslim countries.
