‘Muslim Mafia’ author: Muslims working with Facebook to silence critics of Islam
Posted on May 30, 2014
The Examiner, By Joe Newby:On Wednesday, Dave Gaubatz, a former Air Force investigator and author of “Muslim Mafia,” told Examiner.com that he “infiltrated” a Muslim conference held in Detroit earlier this month. While at the conference, he reportedly spoke to a representative of a group known as Muslim Advocates, who said the organization is working “closely” with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to close down accounts of users critical of Islam.
“They are asking these groups to close the accounts of anyone who is critical of Islam,” he said. “This is considered serious hate speech and should not be allowed on the Internet.”
According to Gaubatz, the representative also said that “anyone critical of Islam and sharia law are haters.” Ditto for those who oppose either the construction or expansion of a mosque in the United States.
“We are experts with deep experience in the courtroom and powerful connections in Congress and the White House,” Gaubatz recalled being told by the Muslim Advocates representative.
“This should be of no surprise to anyone,” Gaubatz said.
Gaubatz also said the conference, which was attended by representatives and leaders from several groups, should have been named the “U.S. Constitution and the 1st Amendment are for MB terrorists and not for American Patriots.” For four days, he said, he stayed at the same hotel as leaders from over a dozen groups that support the Muslim Brotherhood.
He reportedly met and spoke with executives from the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust.
“I was informed that NAIT owned several hundred million dollars of property in America, and has the funding from 400 plus Islamic Centers in America,” he added.
But Gaubatz’ report of collusion between these groups and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter present a clear danger to the fundamental right of free speech and Americans’ ability to freely express themselves online. As we have reported multiple times, Muslim activists have called for global blasphemy bans and an end to free speech in the United States, despite the clear language of the First Amendment. [NOTE: According to a poll done about a year and a half ago, 58% of our Moslem neighbors believe that the First Amendment should NOT cover criticism of Islam.]
Last Wednesday, we reported that one page critical of Islam — “Islam Exposed” — was yanked by Facebook after administrators received death threats. Facebook later restored the page, saying it was yanked in error.
On Wednesday, a post at the page advising visitors to avoid hateful speech was removed by Facebook for allegedly violating the site’s community standards. Facebook did not explain why the post was pulled and one administrator received a 30-day ban.
But as we have reported, Facebook routinely turns a blind eye to threats from users with Muslim-sounding names. Last August, for example, Facebook told a conservative female they could not confirm direct threats she received violated their community standards. One threat reported to Facebook was quite specific: “We will kill you.”
Ironically, Facebook has said it supports free speech and reviews all complaints equally.
We contacted both Facebook and Muslim Advocates to verify Gaubatz’ claim and received no reply as of this writing.
Update: A few hours after this article was published, Facebook falsely flagged the link as “unsafe” in what appears to be a bid to keep it from being circulated. We have reached out to Facebook, but have not received a response.
Update #2: Muslim Advocates spokesperson Fatima Khan responded with an email claiming we misquoted their representative, even though we did not. The statement relayed to us was Gaubatz’s recollection, not a direct quote from MA or any of their representatives. We specifically asked Khan about the quote, and about allegations the group is working to shut down social media accounts of those critical of Islam. Khan never responded. The article was flagged by Facebook after our contact with Khan. More on the incident can be seen here.
Also see below:
- Is Facebook doing the bidding of Muslim groups by censoring articles critical of Islam? by Joe Newby
http://thepunditpress.com/
Is Facebook doing the bidding of Muslim groups by censoring articles critical of Islam?
by Joe Newby • May 30, 2014
Is
Facebook so opposed to free speech and a free press that it’s now doing
the bidding of Muslim advocacy groups that seek to silence criticism of
Islam? It sure seems that’s the case.On Wednesday, yours truly published an article at Examiner.com reporting an allegation made by a counter-terrorism expert who claimed a representative from a Muslim group said they were working with social media sites to delete accounts of users critical of Islam.
In the article, Dave Gaubatz, author of the book, Muslim Mafia, said a representative of Muslim Advocates (MA) told him: “We are experts with deep experience in the courtroom and powerful connections in Congress and the White House.”
Considering the seriousness of the charges, we reached out to both Facebook and MA. Neither responded prior to the article’s publication. After the article was published, we received an email from MA spokesperson Fatima Khan, who provided standard boilerplate language touting a page informing people how to report posts on social media sites. She did not answer our questions, however.
Some time later, she apparently read the article and responded with a message claiming we had incorrectly quoted her representative.
There was only one problem — we never named or directly quoted anyone from the group, which is why we reached out to them in the first place.
We responded with three simple questions:
a. Do you confirm or deny the quote attributed to Gaubatz?
b. Is your group working with Facebook and Twitter to close down accounts of people critical of Islam as he says?
c: Do you think people who are critical of Islam should have their social media accounts closed?
Khan did not respond to our simple request for comments. Shortly after that exchange, the link to the article — which had accumulated over 2,200 “likes” — was falsely flagged by Facebook as being “malicious.”
As a result, no one can “like” or share the link anywhere. The link is still live and can be seen here.
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