Sydney, May 15 (IANS): Facebook has been criticised by an anonymous group of ex-Muslims for censoring anti-Islamic posts and banning pages that promoted such content for violating community rules.

The group included former Muslim-Australians, who allege that the social networking giant banned pages with thousands of followers after users flagged them as "disrespecting" the Islam, The Australian reported on Sunday.

"Restrictions to these platforms would be overwhelmingly damaging for ex-Muslims who are too afraid to go public with their views due to the taboo of leaving and criticising a religion," the report quoted a spokeswoman for the group as saying.

The banned pages were formed to band together ex-Muslims to denounce their former religion.

"Anti-Islamic pages ripped from cyberspace include the Ex-Muslims of North America page -- which soon resurfaced -- and a page called Mufti News which parodied Muslim news," the report noted.

The group also accused Facebook of banning several Arabic-based Atheist pages and asked the company to reconsider its community guidelines to allow for a more diverse conversation on the Islam faith.