Country-Wide Ban On Facebook, WHAAAA?

Yup, it's true boys and girls. Pakistan has now issued a ban on Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia until May 31, 2010 when they decide in the court whether or not the ban will become permanent. Why so uptight you say? Well, turns out there was a "growing amount of sacrilegious content" on all of these sites. What seemed to grind the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority's gears the most was the fact that there is a Facebook group called "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day!" The author of this article went on an extremely bias rant for a bit about how South Park, the cartoon, depicted the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. What she failed to mention though is that this is not the only instance that Muhammad was mentioned in the show. In my English class we were discussing satire and this exact issue came up. The writers of the show commented that they had also depicted other religious leaders such as Jesus throughout their many seasons and this is nothing new. They also felt that since 9/11 tensions about referencing Muhammad, for example would anger people naturally. Before the tragedy occurred though, the writers had the prophet Muhammad in their show with virtually no outcry.

Anyhow, the author ended on a more reasonable note on recognizing deleting the group[s] formed rather than taking an extreme by blocking websites for the whole country. The way I see it is that there is no way avoiding it, there are morons out there who use the internet to release their rage and blocking a whole country from sites WILL NOT ERASE these idiots permanently. It's sort of living in a state of disillusionment. I agree in that the individual groups should be monitored more carefully but I must also note that Muslims are not the only ones targeted through these sites as well, many other races, religions, and beliefs are mocked over the internet by people who have nothing better to do. I'm glad I found this article because it was a very interesting read.


Source: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/asma_uddin/2010/05/pakistans_facebook_ban_protects_the_wrong_party.html?hpid=talkbox1