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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/21/10

Pakistan Bans Facebook

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Some warned the court's response could backfire.

"Blocking the entire website would anger users, especially young and adults, because the social networking website is so popular among them and they spend most of their time on it," said the CEO of Nayatel, Wahaj-us-Siraj.

"Basically, our judges aren't technically sound. They have just ordered it, but it should have been done in a better way by just blocking a particular URL or link."

"The PTA's decision (to block the URL) was rational and good, but let's see how they will implement the court decision."

On the information page on Facebook for the contest - which was still visible on Wednesday - the organizers described it as a "snarky" response to Muslim bloggers who "warned" the creators of the Comedy Central television show "South Park" over a recent depiction of the Prophet (PBUH) in a bear suit.

"We are not trying to slander the average Muslim," the Facebook page creators wrote. "We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammad depictions that we're not afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us into silence."

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of caricatures.

Islamic party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam welcomed the court order and called for a complete ban on all Western websites "promoting liberal culture and obscenity".

"The West, Europe and America are doing such things deliberately to hurt Muslims and to create divides between Islam and other religions," said a senior party member Mohammad Riaz Durrani.

"They are doing this because the want to use such sentiments to continue their war on terror justifying extremism within Islam," he told AFP.

But fans of Facebook, which is wildly popular among the urban, educated and generally moderate elite in Pakistan, were dismayed by the court order.

"What if they will ban it permanent? I will move out somewhere else," one user wrote on his Facebook status update.

Another user said the court order was "crazy".

"This is like spreading extremism as if nobody knew about this page. Now everyone knows," she told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"People are sensible and if you don't like that page you don't go on that page," she said, calling for moderation.

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Muhammad Khurshid, a resident of Bajaur District, tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border is journalist by profession. He contributes articles and news stories to various online and print newspapers. His subject matter is terrorism. He is (more...)
 

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