Obviously, this isn’t happening to everyone who criticizes Islam. But someone like Abdullah Sameer is getting popular, and he’s a pretty attractive face for apostasy from Islam. He was until recently a rather conservative Muslim himself. He’s the person you need to shut up if you want to retain Muslims.
As he notes manipulating Facebook isn’t that hard for motivated individuals. And the platform has billions of people on it. Hundreds of millions at least are Muslim. For Muslims traditionally apostasy has been a serious crime, analogous to treason. Which is why the customary punishment (albeit often not enforced) is death.
Sameer speaking in a way that makes it obvious he’s not crazy is really the problem from this perspective. So they shut him down by any means necessary. From a Muslim perspective, he’s dragging people down to hell. And Facebook isn’t the public square, they’re a massive corporation that needs to make governments and diverse cultures happy. Though obviously, Facebook doesn’t necessarily support blasphemy laws, it’s probably not a high priority to clamp down on this sort of coordinated behavior. After all, who is going to complain?
People who are passionate ex-Muslims are a small and marginal group. Muslims are a huge group. As for progressives, it’s much more important to throw a shit-fit over something Richard Dawkins says (without any knowledge of what the call to prayer is actually saying), than put the spotlight on this sort of illiberal behavior and the culture from which it emerges. Such are the wages of “allyship.”