Apple shuts down employee Slack channels after workers ‘posted Koran verses, organized protests’: report
Posted 25 days ago
From NYPOST.COM
Apple has reportedly shut down internal Slack channels used by Muslim and Jewish employees after workers posted verses of the Koran and organized protests in response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, according to a report.
Management at the Cupertino, Calif.-based company — whose CEO Tim Cook has been unusually quiet since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks — decided to shutter the Slack channels after removing posts related to the war, according to leaked messages obtained by Insider.
“We have a very important update to share with you today. We saw and heard your feedback,” a person identified by Insider as a “leader of Apple’s Muslim employee resource group” wrote in a message to users of the Muslim Slack channel.
“We’ve collectively decided that the only sustainable path forward is to briefly pause the Apple Muslim Slack channel,” the Muslim Slack channel users were told.
“The Apple Jewish Slack channel will do the same.”
The Insider report claimed that Apple’s management removed posts that included verses from the Islamic holy book as well as “certain words that are said by international organizations.”
Employees who posted on the Muslim Slack channel also reportedly attempted to organize protests.
The Muslim resource group leader added that the move was done to “ensure a respectful environment for our communities during a painful and tragic time.”
“We know this comes at a time in which we need community more than ever,” the leader wrote.
Separately, a pro-Israel watchdog demanded that Apple fire a software engineer who posted a message on his LinkedIn page refusing to condemn Hamas.
Apple told The Post that the person in question, however, is a contractor who no longer works for the company and has no business with the iPhone maker.
Mohammad Tami, a senior software engineer who lives in the Palestinian city of Ramallah on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, identifies himself on LinkedIn as a senior software engineer for Apple.
He took to LinkedIn on Wednesday and condemned “the ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Israel.”
“I cannot condemn my people for resisting this brutal and inhuman regime,” Tami wrote on LinkedIn, adding that the Palestinians “have the right to strive for self-determination and the return of our people to the land from which they were forcibly displaced 75 years ago.”
Tami wrote that the “struggle will persist until all refugees are able to return to their homeland” in present-day Israel “between river and sea…until this oppressive system is dismantled.”... (Read more)
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