Nine leading websites including giants Google and Yahoo have been reportedly banned by a Pakistani High Court for allegedly putting blasphemous content on their pages. Officials said on Wednesday that they are yet to receive any intimidation about blocking the sites.
According to the media reports, nine websites including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, were accused of posting sacrilegious and blasphemous material by a Lahore High Court. The Court has ordered Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to block the websites with immediate effect. A man named Muhammad Sidiq had filed a petition in the court claiming that these websites were publishing blasphemous material. Sidiq had sought for banning of these websites in his petition. Justice Mazher Iqbal Sidhu heard the petition along with issuing orders to ban these websites.
Spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, Wahaj-us-Siraj said that the organization had not received any orders to block the websites. Officials of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority have also said the same, stating that they had read the news about blocking of these websites only through the media and no official orders had been relayed to them yet. Head of a local bar association; Aslam Dhakkar welcomed the Court’s decision saying that the legal fraternity in Bahawalpur would be observing a day’s strike to protest the publication of blasphemous material.
In May, Pakistani authorities blocked the social networking site Facebook. The access to the site was later restored.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority chairman has been ordered by the judge to appear before the courts on June 28 with appropriate documents.
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June 25, 2010 at 2:21 am
This is madness indeed. If the twisted logic of banning is followed through, it still makes little sense. Why? Well because even if Pakistani people can’t access this material, people everywhere else will be able to, which means this knowledge will continue to spread. The best thing is to have open discussions on these forums and try to dispel the myths rather than scream blasphemy. You can disconnect the websites but you can’t disconnect the world. If the Pakistanis feel this is wrong, they should engage with people and try and have reasonable discussions and change people’s perceptions of their religion by explaining why they believe certain opinions on their religion are unfair. I think it is time for Muslims to become more mainstream and actually have dialogue, rather these stupid kneejerk reactions. Frankly, my view is that God is dead, and I really don’t know why it even means so much to people because all religion is pie in the sky, and hocus pocus. Why bother with it?