Anti-Islam Facebook page finally gets shut down

Mosque attack inspires successful effort to have ‘radicalization’ site removed

A Quebec Facebook page that critics say is a bastion of antiMuslim propaganda has been removed from the popular social media website.

Pégida Québec had some 18,000 followers and — in a post on its wall last November — one of its members produced a list of Quebec mosques with the stated goal of “vanquishing them.”

In the wake of last month’s deadly mosque shooting in Quebec City, a renewed campaign to shut down the controversial page succeeded.

Facebook removed the page late Thursday after dozens of members of the Montreal group Salam Alaikom flagged graphic content on Pégida’s site.

Last week, just hours after the mosque shooting, another controversial anti-radical-Islam group took its page off-line.

“I cannot live knowing that I may have involuntarily contributed to radicalizing someone,” wrote the administrator of Pas d’Islam radical et de charia au Québec.

“Never will I forgive myself for having directly or indirectly contributed to the death of one or many human beings.”

Alexandre Bissonnette — accused of murdering six men and wounding 19 — frequented right wing, anti-immigrant and white nationalist online forums.

The mosque attack has raised questions about the role of social media in giving a platform for hate speech and extremism.

“Pégida’s goal is to radicalize people and then wash their hands of it,” said Coraline Le Moyne, Salam Alaikom’s administrator.

“These sites have an impact on people who, sadly, aren’t very educated or not particularly interested in learning about Islam ... They would post pictures of women with their throats cut, mosques burning and that sort of thing. It’s extreme. It’s hateful.

“Having this site taken down isn’t a victory because another one will just pop back up. These people don’t understand the impact they have.”

Salam Alaikom is a page dedicated to snuffing out Islamophobia online and Le Moyne says that fight has brought her face to face with members of nationalist groups. Last October, she attended a protest against a rally of far-right organizations like La Meute, Soldiers of Odin and Pégida.

“I stood there face to face with them — these people who are so tough behind their keyboards — and I confronted them,” said Le Moyne, a practicing Muslim.

“They told me to ‘go back to my country’ and to ‘take off my veil’ but I told them I was born here and I wasn’t going anywhere. Then they ran away.”

Salam Alaikom has campaigned to have the Pégida page taken down for more than a year. But Le Moyne says Facebook’s rules against hate speech are too lenient.

A Facebook spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette that the company won’t comment on this particular case.

“There is no place for hate speech on Facebook,” the spokesperson said. “If someone reports hate speech on Facebook, we will review the report and remove the content if it violates our (community standards).”

Facebook considers it hate speech for a user to attack people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity or serious disabilities.

The company’s policy is to remove hate speech when it’s flagged but Le Moyne says sites like Pégida and others have found creative ways around Facebook’s standards.

“Often instead of posting a picture of someone having their throat slashed — which could get their account suspended — they’ll link to an outside website where someone is depicted having their throat slashed,” she said.

“There needs to be a serious crackdown against this.”

In a series of online posts reacting to news that Pégida’s page was removed, many of Salam Alaikom’s users have cautioned that a number of allegedly anti-Muslim Facebook groups are still active in the province. Those include sites like Contre l’islamisation au Québec — which states Muslim migrants are “invading ” western countries and calls on its members to “expel the Islamists” from Canada.

“We are not the racists, they are the racists who want to invade us,” the Facebook page’s mission statement reads.

“Playing the victim card and using the term ‘islamophobia’ are winning strategies for them.”

The Gazette sent a message to Jean-François Asgard — one the alleged founders of Pégida — but he did not reply by Friday evening.

These sites have an impact on people who, sadly, aren’t very educated or ... interested in learning about Islam.