While the hate group Daesh continues to make headlines for its military and terrorist acts, attacks upon the the Goddess Isis for simply sharing a name with a common acronym for these Islamic extremists continues to be under reported. The number of Isis worshippers is eclipsed by those who follow an Abrahamic path, making it understandable on some level that mainstream media outlets dismiss those concerns, such as the statement by the Fellowship of Isis requesting that the name of their goddess not be used in such a manner.

However, incidents such as the vandalism at Isis Books & Gifts , which has led the owner to erect a new sign downplaying the name of the goddess, demonstrate that the confusion continues to have a very real impact on members of the Pagan community.

More recently, a small Facebook group called “Following Isis” was removed, purportedly for violating the site’s terms of service. Its creator, AJ Melia Brokaw, was confronted with that news when she logged into the site on Feb 5. Brokaw posted her reaction to several other groups of which she is a member. She wrote:

I’m so upset. I got on this morning to find that my Isis Devotee group “Following Isis” has been deleted by Facebook as being against community standards. It wasn’t a very active group but it feels like a smack in the face. Will see if I can get it reinstated.

Anyone who has attempted to get a decision like this one reversed has likely found the process of appeal to be extremely challenging, if not outright impossible to navigate. The reviewing of complaints about individual accounts, groups, and pages appears to be a completely automated process. If a decision is made, the affected user is provided no specific information, and offered no clear path to appeal.

For example, this helpdesk post by a group owner asking for information on how to get the decision reviewed was apparently ignored.

All Brokaw knows came in a formulaic message advising her that the group had been removed. It wasn’t exactly an active group, she said, with less than thirty members and only occasional posts in the 6-12 months since she’d created it. While she didn’t have a copy of the exact text to look at, in her recollection the group’s description was, “Something along the line that it was a place for devotees of the Goddess Isis, any were welcome whether Wiccan or Polytheist.”

Posts ran along the lines of quotes, images, and articles relevant to the worship of Isis, under that name or others, such as Aset and Iset.

An ironic twist stems from the fact that Brokaw made the group because it’s difficult to find anything related to the Goddess Isis on Facebook. The name is mostly used in groups and pages focused on opposing Daesh under its moniker of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which is commonly used in mainstream media despite the fact that most governmental officials refer to the group as ISIL or Daesh. Brokaw wanted a space to honor a goddess important to her in the company of like-minded users, of which there were at least a handful. The one page that does continue to stand out against the tide of terrorist-related information is the one maintained by members of the Fellowship of Isis.

Both Brokaw and The Wild Hunt have made numerous attempts to contact someone at Facebook to discuss this issue, to no avail. A contact in the public relations department did not return seven messages left for him, and the emails sent to the address provided in his outgoing voice mail message were returned with an email error that occurs only when an email server will only accept messages from a specific list of domains. This suggests that the system is designed to be used internally by Facebook employees only. A similar non-response resulted from inquiries into some Pagan Facebook pages being hacked.

Given that Facebook continues to be where people gather, and no social networking alternatives have emerged which have taken any measurable number of users away from the site, its employees will likely be able to continue to ignore such concerns for the foreseeable future. While Brokaw is still looking into getting her group restored, she understands this reality, and to some extent has resigned herself to it.

She’s created a new group, one with what she hopes is a clearer name: “Following Isis, Goddess of Many Names.” Perhaps that will be enough to keep it off of the virtual execution block.