Pakistan Court Orders Facebook Ban Over Mohammed Images

jitendraharlalka writes with this excerpt from Al Jazeera English: "A Pakistani court has issued a ban on the social networking site Facebook after a user-generated contest page encouraged members to post caricatures of Prophet Mohammed. The Lahore High Court on Wednesday instructed the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to ban the site after the Islamic Lawyers Movement complained that a page called 'Draw Mohammed Day' is blasphemous. ... 'We have already blocked the URL link and issued instruction to Internet service providers,' Khurram Mehran, a spokesperson for the PTA, said."

Comments

Read your history

[Itninja]

Before people cry 'dude relax...what's the big deal?', they need to read their history. Remember that Islam is many centuries younger than Christianity. If one looks at Christianity from circa 1550 they will see atrocities, brutalizing of the irreverent, and murdering of heretics. Sometimes en masse. Heck, even so-called Christian nations felt Jesus' image was too sacred to display on-screen until the early 1900's

And before you say, 'yeah but this is 2010, they should be over that in these modern times!', remember that the real world is not like a game of Civilization; not all cultures started at the same time. In a few centuries, or less, Islam will be mellowed out.

Re:Read your history

[painandgreed]

And before you say, 'yeah but this is 2010, they should be over that in these modern times!', remember that the real world is not like a game of Civilization; not all cultures started at the same time. In a few centuries, or less, Islam will be mellowed out.

More like it is a game of Civ IV and civilizations can change civics. For a long span of time, it was the muslim civ that was the secular one and didn't kill people for practicing their own religion. They are also the reason that much of the ancient writings of the Greeks survived. The Christians had burned them all like in the Library of Alexandria or used them to make more copies of their writings. While Christianity underwent the enlightenment, they were still catching up to some aspects of Muslim society. Rather, Islamic extremism is fairly new and is probably a reaction to poor economic conditions and the need to find a binding element to combat colonialism with. It strangely seemed to appear about the same time as Evangelical Christian Fundamentalism as we understand it today.

Actually, the Facebook contest is WRONG!!!

[pandrijeczko]

I'm Christian by birth, non-practicing & gave up on organised religion a long time ago because I'm a perfectly nice, law-abiding & considerate citizen without it - and anyone who knocks at my home trying to gain my interest in their religion, gets told to politely "Sod off".

However, if other people want to be part of an organised religion then I have no problem with that and don't consider it my place to inflict my irreligious views on them.

But quite clearly, the Facebook contest was done to *DELIBERATELY* incite religious harassment of Moslems and that is wrong, pure & simple. It's a well published fact that Moslems are offended by caricatures of Mohammed and I don't see how it's that important to feel the need to launch some kind of protest to force it down the throats of everyone, Muslim or non-Muslim.

Sorry, but if it was caricatures of disabled people or soldiers or killed in Afghanistan, then everyone would be up-in-arms about it and someone would be offended by it.

I'm all for Free Speech but I'm more for people demonstrating some intelligence & compassion when it comes to accepting others who look different or have different beliefs - inciting hatred is pathetic!

Re:LOL....

[Vinegar Joe]

Buddha is not a Diety.

A lot of Buddhists might disagree with you on that.

Re:Blasphemy?

[huckamania]

One of the unwritten rules of Slashdot is that every discussion of Islam must be turned into a Christian hate fest. The same logic does not apply to stories about Christians but who would ever think about asking for balance from zealots. It is intellectually dishonest and bad logic to boot, but don't let that stop you.

Re:Mohammed?

[morgen_m]

You should not disrespect the Prophet (P' Duh), piss be upon him!