Pak Muslims urged to shun blasphemous Facebook

Intellectuals and scholars have urged Muslims to use Millat Facebook, a Muslims alternative to the US Facebook, saying they should boycott products of the countries and organizations involved in blasphemy of the Holy Prophet (SAW).

Muslim leaders at a round table conference have claimed that the social networking website, Facebook, which had been adamant on hosting a blasphemous page in the name of freedom of speech, was callously ignoring the annoyance of the whole Muslim world, The News reports.

Speaking at the conference “Blasphemy by Facebook and the Role of Muslim Youth on Social Media”, hosted by owners of Millat Facebook, a Muslim alternative to the US Facebook at Hamdard center on Saturday, the speakers slammed the country’s pseudo intellectuals and TV analysts who, they said, had been following the footsteps of Facebook by advocating the abolishment or amendment to the country’s Blasphemy laws.

Millat Facebook owners told the participants that their website had received huge success soon after it was launched in May 2010 in response to the deliberate blasphemy of the Prophet of Islam (SAW) as Muslim masses across the globe had joined it in large numbers. However, it had been suffering the hostilities from the authorities in the US, Europe and Pakistan, which had created hurdles in its functioning by closing its hosting or denying it any place on the world wide web.

Umar Mir, the CEO of MFB, said unnamed US officials had forced its closure within few months by threatening the hosts in the US and Europe.

What was more hurting was that Pakistan’s national ISP, the PTCL had not only refused to host the site for unknown reasons, but also refused to give their denial in writing, he added.

He further alleged that several Jewish and Christian groups had made organized attacks to hack MFB for which they had invited all of their likeminded people from all over the world by posting appeals and invitations on the internet calling to block “Muslims’ alternative to FB” on different agreed upon dates. However, the MFB team had thwarted their malicious designs.

First Published: Feb 06, 2012 17:17 IST