Drawing a line: Pakistan’s jihad against the Internet

A couple of months ago, when self-styled 'security analyst' Zaid Hamid's anti-India vitriol started getting out of hand, a group of Pakistanis got together on Facebook to condemn his hate speech and calls for war against 'Hindu Zionists'. There were jokes about 'Jihad-e-Facebook' and 'Ghazwa-e-YouTube' because, like former dictator Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, that's where an overwhelming majority of Hamid's supporters were anyway. No one could have thought at the point that an organ of the state would declare jihad against Facebook, but that is exactly what has happened. On 19 May, on a petition filed by a group calling itself the Islamic Lawyers Movement, the Lahore High Court ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block Facebook in response to the perceived blasphemy of a single page about 'Draw Muhammad Day'.

It all started in April, when the creators of the animated TV series South Park decided to take a stand in favour of free speech in their 200th episode, which showed, among other things, Jesus watching porn, the Buddha smoking pot, and the Prophet Muhammad in a teddy-bear costume. Comedy Central, the series' broadcaster, censured the bits with Muhammad and bleeped-out parts that mentioned his name; but unedited versions of the episode quickly made their way around the Internet. The creators were not happy with the additional censoring when they had, in their opinion, taken care not to depict any picture of Muhammad, per se – only the teddy-bear costume.