The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has reported that Facebook has shutdown the groups Ihkwanwiki account and blames the US government for the decision. According to the report:
The US-based social networking site Facebook has shut down the Muslim Brotherhood’s account ikhwanwiki with no right. The group, which had approximately 2650 members, was established in an attempt to raise worldwide awareness to the group’s cause calling for peaceful reform and give an insight to the true essence of the MB group. None of the group’s administrators were given any notice from Facebook that they had violated terms or conditions, and were given no direct reason as to why they had had their accounts disabled. It is clearly a political attack against the MB who enjoys popularity both in Egypt and abroad. The Ikhwanwiki administration believes that all political ideas and discussion should be free of censorship on the internet, but wishes to expose this hypocrisy, which often surrounds debate concerning the MB issue. MB pages are frequently censored or hacked however the group is determined to continue on, despite Facebook’s censorship. The group’s account never posted anything hateful or threatening stressing it is Facebook that is revealing itself to be hateful and practicing censorship towards groups organizing for progressive and peaceful social change. Apparently the U.S. government and big corporations have great influence over Facebook policies and decisions.
According to a report in the UAE-based National newspaper, Ihkwanwiki itself is part of a suite of Brotherhood-affiliated websites which also includes IhkwanBook, IkhwanWeb, and IkhwanGoogle. Each of these sites attempts to replicate its mainstream counterpart such as Wikipedia, Facebook and Google. A previous post discussed the launch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s version of the social networking site Facebook, to be called IkhwanBook. The Egyptian Brotherhood is known to be quite active on Facebook.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood can be considered to be the “mother” organization of what is referred to in these pages as the Global Muslim Brotherhood which developed as Muslim Brothers fleeing Egypt settled in Europe and the United States, as well as other places, throughout the years. The global network has since eclipsed the Egyptian organization as evidenced by global Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi’s decision to turn down the leadership of the Egyptian organization when it was offered to him in 2004.