In Defense of Pakistan…and Facebook

Pakistan’s long, national social networking nightmare has finally drawn to a close. At the end of May, the country decided to re-open access to Facebook to its citizens, effectively ending a nearly two-week standoff between Pakistani leaders and the world’s most popular online social network. The highly publicized spat revolved around a contentious Facebook page encouraging users to submit drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, an act considered sacrilegious among Muslims.

When the page titled “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” first surfaced, authorities within Pakistan announced their plans to ban access to the site within the country’s borders, and vowed to maintain the digital carapace until Facebook had purged the user-generated forum from its platform. The government subsequently implemented a similar ban on YouTube, on the grounds that the site hosted much of the same “sacrilegious” material, although access was restored after blocking specifically targeted media.

On May 31, however, the Pakistani Telecommunications Agency (PTA) opened its doors to Facebook once again, after reportedly receiving confirmation that the page would be censored for users in Pakistan.

In an e-mail statement, spokeswoman Debbie Frost explained the action, saying, “We have not removed the content from Facebook, although some pages may have been removed by their creators, but have only restricted access to it from certain countries out of respect for local rules.”

The fiery rhetoric and widespread protests may have died down to a slow murmur, but most likely won’t prevent a substantial portion of the online community from criticizing Facebook’s decision. While Western audiences and self-proclaimed free-speech advocates may condemn the site for “caving in” to the censorship demands of a single nation, a more circumspect examination of the issue would reveal Facebook’s action for exactly what it is: wholly appropriate, and long overdue.

A quick glance at the “Draw Mohammed” Facebook page would reveal a farrago of hate-laced, vitriolic and downright obscene dialogue. Of the few cartoons scattered between the flood of acerbic wall posts, most portray the Prophet in lewd or disparaging positions, and are often accompanied by a uniquely racist or xenophobic caption.

If users were submitting similarly crude pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr., the world would cry “hate speech.” But because Mohammed and his Muslim followers are the target of this particular slander, hate inexplicably falls under the blanket of free speech.

The entire campaign, in short, is nothing more than a glorified attempt to further smear a religion and a culture that’s already been raked over the coals in a myriad of right-wing, mainstream Western media. There’s an intelligent discussion to be had here, and one that could, in theory, help bridge the gap between the divergent ways in which Western and Islamic audiences conceive of free speech ideals. But sticking out our Occidental tongues in puerile defiance of a sacred cultural norm is certainly not the way to go about engaging in that conversation.

There’s a razor-thin line between an individual’s civil right to freely express himself or herself, and blatant xenophobia. And it’s a line that the Facebook page’s fans have already crossed, many times over.

Should freedom of expression be promoted, and should its social benefits be publicly espoused? Absolutely. But America and Europe perceive of the principle in a form that’s entirely different from many Muslim countries. When any country or culture begins to impose its ideals and absolute maxims on a completely orthogonal socio-political framework, it treads dangerously close to colonialist territory.

Yet even in the US, such freedom isn’t absolute. No American would argue against the merits of outlawing people from screaming, “Fire!” in a crowded theatre—one of the most famously cited restrictions on the free speech rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. The prohibitive law is in place precisely because the potential costs of sparking superfluous chaos or riots far outweigh the benefits of affording an individual his or her due civil liberties.

Conducting a social cost-benefit analysis of Mohammed caricatures would result in a similarly incongruous balance sheet—and one that’s firmly in the red.

Not long after the page first surfaced, death threats were filed against outspoken supporters of the cause, and a wave of social unrest rippled across Pakistan, thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets to protest against Facebook—not, it should be noted, their own government. Although there was indeed a notable portion of liberal protesters who stood up against the ban, to say that the Pakistani government acted unilaterally against the collective will of its citizenry—as many claim—is a gross exaggeration.

Pakistan was acting not only in its best interest, but in the West’s as well. And Facebook, in appeasing the country, only helped palliate a crisis that appeared to be teetering on the brink of violence.

The social network may be nothing more than a platform, and many could argue that its corporate image should be dissociated from the actions and words of its members. Yet such a line of argumentation fails to acknowledge that any social networking site will always be defined by its body politic of subscribers, and their actions. It’s precisely for this reason that such platforms occasionally step in to regulate what users say and post, as Facebook has in the past.

In censoring the page exclusively within Pakistan, the social network took a decidedly diplomatic route. It placated protesters, without completely alienating a substantial portion of its user base. The company may have been dilatory in making the decision, but considering the kinds of opinions and images being propagated within the page, and the potentially severe events that could unfold as a direct result of such material, its action is certainly a welcomed one.

Now that the tides of conflict seem to have subsided, it’s worth asking the question: “Was it really worth it?”

Free speech advocates and “Draw Mohammed” supporters must now honestly ask themselves whether their lives were ever that much worse off without a regular appearance from Mohammed in the pages of “Doonesbury.” Does a worldwide embargo on caricatures of the Prophet really preclude the online community from freely grilling the Prophet in other media outlets, as many already do?

More importantly, was the opportunity to hazily sketch a fabricated version of Mohammed ever worth the risk of losing very real lives? Is a mere cartoon ever worth publicizing when a wide swath of the world’s population is still deprived of intrinsically more vital human needs and rights? Or was the entire controversy just a well-camouflaged Schadenfreude—another vehicle by which angry Westerners can take yet another jab at Islam, under the transparent veil of “universal” civil liberties?

The answer is obvious.

Amar Toor – Freelance journalist and former consultant in the Trade and Agriculture Department of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)