''We stood up for this because different voices -- even if they're sometimes offensive -- can make the world a better and more interesting place."
Source/Credit: Times of India
By Chidanand Rajghatta | January 10, 2015
WASHINGTON: Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg triggered off an online avalanche of protests, and a war of words between Pakistani trolls and Indian baiters, after revealing in the midst of the Charlie Hedbo imbroglio that a Pakistani extremist had sought to have him sentenced to death because Facebook refused to ban content about Mohammed that offended him.
Zuckerberg did not identify the extremist but the mere mention of Pakistan brought that country's online defenders into the fray. ''You can't just blame the whole nation on the basis of one person's act,'' one Pakistani follower contested on Zuckerberg's Facebook page.
Even as the Facebook CEO reeled back to acknowledge, ''You're right. I am friends with several Pakistanis, and I know most Pakistanis are not like the person who tried to have me sentenced to death!'' others users, many of them Indian, taunted Pakistanis while highlighting their country's intolerance, some of it constitutionally mandated and state sanctioned.
Compounding the Pakistani embarrassment, a blasphemy accused was reported killed after being released from prison and a sectarian murderer escaped the gallows after his family stuck a deal with the victim's family, underscoring the country's regression towards primitive laws and mindset.
Zuckerberg's comments began innocuously enough. ''A few years ago, an extremist in Pakistan fought to have me sentenced to death because Facebook refused to ban content about Mohammed that offended him,'' he wrote suo motu on his Facebook page, even as the world remained transfixed by the developments in Paris.
''We stood up for this because different voices -- even if they're sometimes offensive -- can make the world a better and more interesting place. Facebook has always been a place where people across the world share their views and ideas. We follow the laws in each country, but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world,'' he noted.
''Yet as I reflect on yesterday's attack and my own experience with extremism, this is what we all need to reject -- a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world. I won't let that happen on Facebook. I'm committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence,'' he added before signing off by hashtagging #JeSuisCharlie, to signal his support for free speech.
But many Pakistanis contested that approach, broadly arguing that freedom cannot be absolute. Those supporting total license questioned where and who would draw the line demarcating offensive speech. Meantime, Indian and Pakistani trolls diminished each other's country and practices, and mostly themselves, drawing crude, vulgar caricatures of the other side.
Officially though, Pakistan on Thursday condemned as ''terrorism'' the attack on a French magazine that has outraged some Muslims for its irreverent cartoons of Mohammed, despite its own primitive laws that make insulting the Prophet punishable by death.
''Pakistan condemns the brutal terrorist attack in Paris that resulted in the loss of many lives and has left several others injured,'' Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, even as ''blasphemers'' in the country, mostly minorities and so-called apostates, continue to be killed by extremists coddled by the state.
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Read original post here: USA: A Pakistani extremist wanted me dead, says Mark Zuckerberg
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