Ayman El Kaissi reports on Facebook’s censorship of atheist groups and the resistance to same.

In the middle of April, Facebook removed more than six Arabic-speaking atheist pages due to “violations” of Community Standards. This is not the first time that Facebook has censored atheists and freethinkers in the MENA region. In response, the Atheist Alliance – Middle-East and North Africa (AA-MENA) has decided to speak out, demanding that Facebook change the way it addresses violation reports, so as to preserve members’ freedom of speech.

In February 2016, ten of the largest Arabic-speaking atheist groups, with a total of about 100,000 members, have been deactivated for the same reason: heavy reporting campaigns that are organized by “cyber jihadist” fundamentalist Islamic groups, especially for the removal of any anti-Islamic group or page. In such coordinated campaigns, very large numbers of people, and possibly automated scripts, simultaneously file reports falsely claiming that a page, group, or personal account has violated Community Standards.

There’s a petition and a campaign to get Zuckerberg to do better.

AA-MENA has adopted #FacebookVSFreeSpeech as the hashtag of its Facebook event, Atheism: Campaigning to regain the right to free speech within Facebook Pages. The campaign’s goal is to rally atheists and freethinkers of the MENA region and to attract the attention of relevant nongovernmental organizations and irreligious social media activists to their cause.

But this attack on free speech spilled out of Facebook and resulted into a cold-blooded murder. On April 22, 2016, Yemeni activist Omar Bataweel was abducted in front of his home in the city of Aden. Police reports stated that he was shot and left to die on the street; locals discovered his body the next morning. Omar had received death threats prior to his execution for posting criticism of Islamic clergy and heritage on Facebook and was accused of apostasy and atheism. His case remains open and no suspects have been apprehended till now.

(I think by “till now” he means as of now, i.e. so far or yet.)

For irreligious people of the MENA region, social media outlets—especially Facebook—have become the only platform that they can safely use to express their thoughts and opinions, share their stories, and come together without feeling threatened. In most Arab countries, the demographic majority is Muslim; many regimes are actual theocracies while the others are very deeply influenced by Islamic religious authorities at all levels of public life.

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Freethinkers, atheists, and freedom activists in the MENA region live under such oppressive regimes and communities. Most of them cannot express their religious, political, cultural, or social views and thoughts freely. This ever-growing segment of people living in the Arab World is still operating with a “low profile” and with minuscule traditional media coverage. This is the main reason for their enormous investments in social media platforms, such as Facebook, which are viewed by them as the last resort for freedom of thought and expression.

It’s deeply ironic that this thing that started out as Zuckerberg’s tool for ranking female Harvard students according to degree of hotness is now a last resort for freedom of thought and expression in oppressive theocratic countries, but there it is.