There’s an Islamist Facebook page that posted a set of graphics showing how to stone someone to death. The graphics were originally published by the National Post on November 20 2010.
The Facebook graphics are below the fold. Trigger warning, obviously.
The National Post article was illustrating the horror. The Facebook page is apparently giving instructions.
People (including me) have been reporting it, but it’s still there.
U
Update: Facebook reported on their response to my report: they said this doesn’t violate their community standards so they’re not removing it.
Wow- that is really disturbing. Including the part where people are apparently thinking that they would like to stone someone, so they go ahead and search facebook for some tips before heading out the door. Helpful picture tips.
And perhaps I’m mistaken, but the fellow in the first picture surveying the hole, isn’t he the same one throwing the first stone? What is that supposed to mean?
And all the more disturbing because Facebook has seen it and explicitly decided not to remove it.
I have to wonder what Facebook’s reasoning is, and I honestly cannot understand why they wouldn’t immediately take it down.
Sick fucks.
I have just posted a link to this story at Jesus & Mo, along with the suggestion that the commentariat there consider closing their facebook accounts, and try to convince others to do the same. I will be passing the same message to all of my family, friends, and aquaintances first thing tomorrow.
Ummm, what? What?
Putting aside the ‘How can people do this to each other’, how can Facebook find this ‘OK’?
I just don’t understand…
Appalling and inhuman.
Which of their community standards (https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards) does that violate? It depicts violence, but isn’t credible incitement, unless there’s something in the arabic text that hasn’t been mentioned. Whether it’s “graphic content” or not would seem to be a judgment call, not a clear cut violation. About the best reason for them to take it down would be that it’s potentially an intellectual property violation, but a case could be made that the textual addition is transformation or commentary that brings fair use up.
I mean, yes, it’s a horrible thing. But it’ s not clear to me that it’s a horrible thing that violates their stated policies.
Wait…
So you can tell people how to stone someone to death and you can mercilessly mock a child with Progeria, but you cannot post breastfeeding photos because that is disgusting?
I just feel better and better about leaving Facebook.
Josh – well it says “You may not credibly threaten others, or organize acts of real-world violence.” Giving instructions on how to stone people to death seems like organizing acts of real-world violence, especially when given by Islamists, no? Islamists do stone people to death when they succeed in taking power. Sometimes they do it freelance, when they have only very local temporary power.
Do we know for sure that the page is inciting/condoning the actions depicted and not criticising them? After all, merely being in Arabic doesn’t automatically make it Islamist, and I’m wary of jumping to conclusions too quickly. Can anyone out there who actually speaks the language shed some light?
If Facebook were to remove the images it might reduce their advertising revenue, doing a terrible disservice to the shareholders.
Note the “western” clothing of the man in frame 7, who is presumably checking to verify that the victim is dead – and clearly deciding such is not the case. I’m not sure what to make of that (beyond the appalling horror of the whole thing).
Anyone know what the two small drawings above frame 2 are showing? Man vs. woman? Adult vs. child?
It would be interesting to try to set up a “Why Islamists Must Be Stopped” Facebook page and thereon post the same images. I wonder how long they would last there.
Personally I am intrigued by the character in the penultimate pane who is presumably a doctor brought in to attest to the liveliness of the victim; as he is depicted as educated in his western clothes what does that actually say about the mob with the rocks in their galabeas? Ignorant peasants perhaps?
I am all for undermining the ubiquity of that partiicular portal of expression but one should always be careful of summoning the censors.
Far better surely to encourage people to use their Facebook facility to get on a verbal rampage and take issue with the act so brutally and unequivocally depicted – there could hardly be a better opportunity.
I don’t do Facebook so can’t see the translations but it strikes me that all the comments that I can read are criticising the practice or attacking the posting of the graphic as counter productive.
Including one that contrasts it to the hypocrisy of the condemnation of cartoons of the prophet being published.
I just tried to report it for Graphic Violence, and Facebook “reviewed” it with amazing speed. Result? Not Removed. The mind boggles. Is it possible to give this greater publicity?
And this is what a Google Translate makes of the Arabic blurb beneath the picture:
“Steps to implement the law of God stoning the adulterer and the adulteress whom ignorant and did not know how to apply them, taking into account that women be a hole deeper than a man hole cover her nakedness pass permeated Interest Woman in Texas”
…Woman be a hole deeper than a man hole cover her nakedness…
Fucking religion.
“Let’s go kill [named person or class of person]. Here’s how.” is a credible threat of organizing real world violence. “Here’s are details of how one method the state uses to execute criminals works”, even from a group which would use that method unjustly if they were to be as official a government organization as any other in their region? Still strikes me as a judgment call biased towards not a violation of the terms as written.
Should people also be prohibited from posting infographics of how to tie a proper noose? It could, depending on context, be read as advocating self-harm or vigilantism, but without a call to action it could just as easily be a page from a book of knots. Or from the Washington State Department of Corrections handbook. Sorry, but in this particular case, unless there’s some call to action or statement of desire I’m not aware of, I’m in the “the response to bad speech is more speech” camp.
(As for the questions about what’s going on in parts of the graphic, those are answered by the National Post link. The guy throwing the first stone and surveying the hole is the judge. The two inset drawings show how deep the hole is to be relative to the victim’s body for a man vs a woman.)
There are no fucking words. This is torture. This is inhumane. Fuck. Sorry, I keep using ‘inhumane’ as if there is anything humans have ever done that reflects being ‘humane’. Being ‘humane’ seems to be the antithesis of what humanity really is. So it’s like an oxymoron to me. *tears*
The text apparently runs, as Arabic text usually does, from right to left – but the picture sequence is westernized and runs left to right.
See? Even extremist Islam is modernizing!
[/sarc]
It’s showing execution, murder, torture. Is that not graphically violent content? It is giving instructions for torture. Is that not graphically violent?
If you can get Ophelia’s link to the National Post article to open (I had a hard time doing that), you can click on the image and get a PDF that is easy to read. Note the “SOURCES: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL; WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS; INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE AGAINST STONING”. This wasn’t originally a how-to document. Read the text – it makes it even more chilling, e.g.
(Emphasis mine – see how caring and gentle it all is!)
I presume this is to prevent the men torturing her to death from having their lust stirred.
This is easily the most horrid thing i’ve seen since pictures from Abu Ghraib. I try hard not to see atrocities. I’ve seen enough pictures of massacres and murdes to last me a lifetime. This will be difficult to un-see.
How reassuring to know that they have some standards…
It seems like the only thing that violates Facebook community standards is breastfeeding women.
I know why I’m not on fucking facebook
The man versus woman thing? If I recall correctly something I read elsewhere, if someone can extricate themselves from the hole during the process and escape the stoning, they’re OK. They won’t be brought back for the process to be repeated. (Allah must have let it happen or some such malarkey.) So, for entirely unrelated reasons which I’ve never had the stomach to check further, women are buried to the shoulders but men merely to the waist.
Acolyte of Sagan, thankfully I deleted my FB account nearly a year ago. It seemed a big deal at the time but I’ve never missed it.
Given this recent incident in Australia :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-28/four-men-found-guilty-over-sharia-whipping/4545010
where four men have been found guilty of assault after a Muslim convert was whipped with electrical cord as punishment under sharia law for drinking alcohol and taking drugs its not hard to imagine DYI Sharia “justice” being incited and occurring because this appalling site. Surely that’s got to be illegal.
In other news :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-27/court-orders-flogging-for-alleged-rape-victim/4543882
Spose at least she’s not being stoned to death or executed by bullet like the Taliban did to a woman last year.
PS. Just shared this blog entry on facebook incl. to media and police pages. Hopefully they’ll act.
So let me preface this by saying that NONE OF THIS MAKES IT OKAY. But…
It’s pretty clear from history and context that nobody is seriously intending this as an actual how-to-stone guide. As noted, the graphics originated from a National Post article that was (ostensibly) attempting to explain the processing of stoning to Westerners (though given the NP’s political stance, I question the earnestness of their purpose… it seems just as likely to me that the deceivingly matter-of-fact graphics were intended to stoke anti-Arab racism more than to expose the barbarism of stoning). The Facebook page on which the update is posted does indeed appear to be Islamist assholes, but it’s loaded with a lot of irreverent tongue-in-cheek stuff — a browse through the same gallery in which those photo appeared reveals a crapload of meme-laden photoshop jobs, goofy stuff poking fun at the Pope, etc.
In other words: Reading between the lines, I don’t think this is meant as a serious how-to-stone guide. Rather, it’s an image created by and for a bunch of douchebags who think that a tongue-in-cheek how-to-stone guide is actually funny. It’s like the difference between making “hilarious” jokes about date rape vs. telling people how to procure GHB. They’re still assholes, but possibly a slightly different kind of asshole than what we are thinking. (And the fact that the graphics originated from an NP article which I suspect had less-than-pristine intentions muddies the water even further)
It looks to me like showing the wrong way is to only go to the waist, allowing them more movement and possibly to escape (pic on left), and the proper way is to be up to the shoulders (pic on right). But that’s total conjecture.
So this is okay with their policy, but they DID attempt to shut down the voice of The uprising of women in the Arab world انتفاضة المرأة في العالم العربي!! that was NOT OK! upside down …
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DYFfr5cM2tFGl7CchfQtc-DJ_-ExJHjh9WwC_I2HV8E/edit
This is for both men and women in case of adultery – under Islamic law/ shaaria.
You can see the difference in how deep the body should be put underground in the little graphics with black: man body goes half under, woman body goes 2 thirds under.
You seem to recall correctly.
It is a barbaric and brutal death. And if a man escapes it, he is considered free. A woman doesn’t really get that chance due to how deeply she’s buried.
I’ve seen a few fundies want to bring the punishment here to the States as well.
Reported as well. Maybe enough reports will do it? I dunno. I know of more than a few people (one more than once due to his political leanings) who have had posts removed or “lost” by Facebook that simply bashed Stephen Harper or his policies. But they let this stay up? What, because there isn’t any blood or a real face? It’s revolting.
HOW DOES THIS NOT VIOLATE THEIR “COMMUNITY STANDARDS” IT TEACHES YOU HOW TO KILL PEOPLE.
Sorry, that required all-caps.
I know, I was using a lot of all-caps about it yesterday.
I also do not buy for one second the argument that “oh, they don’t REALLY intend people to go out and do this.” What the hell? If I write a blog post about how to effectively build a bomb and use it to blow up a school and then add a little disclaimer that this is just for shits and giggles and not in order that anybody actually DO this, somebody could still use my instructions to do it, intent be damned. Intent is not magic.
Indeed. Plus, it’s not as if stoning doesn’t happen. It does happen! This stuff is no joke.
Carlie at 29
After I posed that question, I managed to get to the National Post article that Ophelia linked to. It answered all of these questions.
Link to a PDF version of the article (I originally had trouble getting to the article with Ophelia’s link, but that now appears to have been a temporary glitch).
@33. Sercee
Same here except afriend of ine wa banned for a number of weeks for referring to Australian opposition leader and our closest equivalent to Tea party leader Tony Abott (aka “the Mad monk”*) as a”turd.” Seems facebook definitely has an anti-progressive pro-right-wing agenda. I’ve heard other stories supporting this too.
* See : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BC49dJSo5k&playnext=1&list=PLCACEF0BA69918740&feature=results_video
&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otsfhMFhi2s
Swearing warning for that second one albeit in a great sweet voice.
Correction :
Same here except a friend of mine was banned for a number of weeks merely for referring to Australian opposition leader and our closest equivalent to Tea party leader Tony Abott (aka “the Mad monk”*) as a”turd” on fb.
A link to the full translation. Be warned, it is even more horrific than anything the pictures suggest.
http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=82688
That’s not a translation of the Arabic text. It’s the original illustration from which the one with Arabic text was copied, as seen in the second link of this post.