Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The Islamophobia Observatory at Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta hailed Facebook new policies that prohibit hate crimes and removing posts that deny or distort the Holocaust and start directing people to authoritative sources if they search for relevant information.

In a recent press release, the Islamophobia Observatory pointed out that the presence of hate speech on social media platforms is an alarming phenomenon that negatively affect human relations and contribute to spreading discrimination since the content is not bound by governing polices. This speech in turn results in increasing the rate of hate crimes and mass murder against minorities groups.

The Observatory noted that this step necessitates developing strategies to regulate the content published on these platforms in a way that guarantee the right to freedom of speech and avoiding any harm caused by hate speech posts. Zuckerberg said in a blog post that he believes the new policy strikes the “right balance” in drawing the lines between what is and is not acceptable speech, which is not an easy task, he commented.

In conclusion, the Observatory called for disseminating this initiative to encompass banning all Islamophobia speech and discrimination posts, and give a chance to promote speech that brings to focus the common values between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. This regulation will unquestionably block the means for terrorist and extremist groups and thus prevent them from disseminating their poisoned ideologies.