RELIGION - The popular social media website Facebook has been banned in Pakistan for images of the Prophet Muhammad on various Facebook groups.
Today Pakistan’s government has ordered internet service providers to block Facebook because Islam prohibits any images of the prophet. A group of Islamic lawyers won a court order earlier today requiring the shutdown. Earlier protests against the website were becoming increasingly violent.At the centre of the dispute — “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” — encourages users to post images of the prophet on May 20th to protest threats made against the creators of “South Park” for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year. The group has over 46,000 users and will likely grow now that its receiving more media attention.
Technically it was Santa Claus dressed up in the bear suit, as later revealed in the episode... but whatever.
"We're not Muslim. We don't have to follow Islamic rules about depicting Muhammad. If people want to get upset about it, fine. But as non-Muslims we have the right to depict whoever we want," says one Facebook user.
“We are not trying to slander the average Muslim,” said the information section of the Facebook page. “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.”
Pakistan's ban against Facebook will only last until the end of May.
Other countries however, including China, have a permanent ban against Facebook because of the Tianenmen Square Massacre.
There are plenty of Muhammad images available on the internet, easily found with a Google image search for Prophet Muhammad. So why aren't they protesting and banning Google too?What I don't understand is why they didn't just submit a complaint to remove the page?
I mean if billionaire Peter Nygard can have Facebook groups boycotting him removed using phony nonsense about intellectual property infringement, why can't Muslim groups do the same thing?
After all if a billionaire can censor any pages he doesn't like, why can't a religious group? (I am not actually endorsing this idea, I am just pointing out the fact that Peter Nygard gets away with this bullshit.)
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UPDATE! The Facebook page “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” was deleted yesterday. A new group was started to replace it and is already up to 15,000 members.
Obviously many of the images on the page are meant to provoke humour.
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