Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad by Adina Kutnicki & Joe Newby

Author:Adina Kutnicki & Joe Newby [Kutnicki, Adina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Informative
Publisher: World Ahead Press
Published: 2016-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

How Facebook Has Dealt with Articles and Links Critical of Militant Jihad

Facebook has a literal arsenal of online weapons it can use to stifle news and information it deems to be offensive. We’ve discussed the use of some of those tools in previous chapters, but Facebook has also found creative ways to squash articles that deal with topics like militant jihad.

In May 2014, Dave Gaubatz, a highly respected counterterrorism specialist who co-authored Muslim Mafia, said he infiltrated a Muslim conference held in Detroit earlier in the month.1

“I was recently at an ISNA Conference. The executive leaders essentially said they have Facebook leaders in their ‘pockets’,” he said, referring to the Islamic Society of North America, an organization that is a top Muslim Brotherhood front group within North America.

According to Gaubatz, an individual who identified himself as a representative of Muslim Advocates reportedly told him the group is “working closely” with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to close down accounts of users critical of Islam.

“This is considered serious hate speech and should not be allowed on the Internet,” Gaubatz explained. The representative also reportedly said that “anyone critical of Islam and sharia law are haters.” The same description applied to those who oppose the construction or expansion of mosques in the United States, he added.

Given the seriousness of the charge, the author reached out to both Facebook and the Muslim Advocates seeking comment. Facebook, and this happens more often than not, did not respond to the author’s request.

Fatima Khan, executive director of the organization, responded with a friendly, albeit useless message containing standard public relations boilerplate. Unfortunately, Khan’s message came too late as the article had already been published.

About two hours later, Khan responded. Her tone after reading the article had changed somewhat as she apparently thought she could intimidate the author into pulling the article by using the standard, “Who is your editor?” tactic. After being informed that the article did not attribute anything to her representative directly, and presented with a second opportunity to directly respond to the writer’s questions, she cut off contact. It is interesting to note, however, that she neither confirmed nor denied Gaubatz’s allegations.

Shortly after that exchange the article was flagged by Facebook as unsafe. Facebook did not explain what, exactly made the article unsafe, and the timing, coming as it did so soon after the exchange with Khan, was highly suspect. Did Khan have a direct connection to someone at Facebook’s enforcement arm? The evidence, although circumstantial, would suggest to a reasonable and logical person that may be the case.

This was not an isolated incident, however. Another article written shortly after that got the same treatment and an article published in 2015 was similarly flagged within twenty minutes of being posted to Facebook. The only thing these articles had in common was the topic: Islam.2 Gadi Adelman, a counterterrorism expert who contributes to the Jerusalem Post, said Facebook has done the same thing with links to his articles. The problem, he explained, began in January 2014 and had been ongoing as of June of that same year.

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