Pakistan Bans Facebook | Pakistani Emos Don't Know Where To Express Their Angst

(May 19) – The popular, completely pointless and utterly infuriating social networking site, Facebook, has been blocked in Pakistan because of a new page on the site is providing a forum for people to actively flaunt the laws of Islam and post pictures of the Prophet Mohammad…

This story brings up a few good points.  The first being that blasphemy, which is a very real sin to believers of any faith, is not something that non believers care a jot about.  I am as worried about pissing off God and going to hell as I am of Santa and The Easter Bunny molesting me…  It is hard to be bothered by something I don’t believe in. The word blasphemy gets thrown about too often these days, I use it if someone bad mouths a film I like…  That’s blasphemy.  Jesus Christ on a stick I hate when people bad mouth movies I like, such as the work of Nic Cage.

The banning of such a massive web phenomenon would have gigantic implications if it were to occur in the UK and many other places I’m guessing, it is an addiction to some, to others it is a vital tool in their everyday life…  It begs the question; how many Pakistan residents who follow Islam would gladly live with the existence of this so called “blasphemy” in order to keep up to date with what people they went to school with are up to these days?  I refer in particular to the younger generations who have more access to the rest of the world than ever before, and are becoming less and less religious, which is not exclusive to Islam, every faith faces the same thing, indifference in general.  Young generations are rebelling against organisations that, while following different Gods, all oppress and dictate without any room for freedom of thought or expression.

Naturally I have visited the page, and some of the pictures are incredibly amusing, some are childish and some are downright out of order, but that is the point of the Internet, to slander whatever and whoever you want from the safety of your own home…  There will always be people against freedom of speech, and chose to express that by picketing, blissfully unaware of the hypocrisy.  The dictionary on my phone describes a ‘paradox’ as “a statement that contradicts itself”, perfectly personified by someone like this…

…  Exactly.

It is hard to decide on what to make of facebook, one minute they are standing by freedom of speech by telling an entire religion to deal with it or beat it, the next minute they are making security updates that sign your photos over to them…  In essence, you are owned by facebook as soon as you sign up.

There is no stopping it though, social networking is not the future as much as it is the norm.  Twitter and Facebook in particular have given people the chance to say what they want at any time of the day, with a guaranteed audience of however many people you happen to be friends with…  Although you can’t really call them friends.  You can advertise your band, website, business or what you had for lunch, whatever, it is never important but it is an insight into the lives of other, and that’s what we want.

The use of the ‘pages’, where you can follow fan pages of your favourite actors or musicians, you can even start Internet campaigns from these pages…  Like a petition, only easier to sign up to, and thanks to this information sharing you can immediately let your “friends” know just how cool you are because the one true God Facebook shows that you are  a fan of  pages like the campaign to get Jeff Buckley to number one…

The freedom to share opinion is becoming easier with every new network site that pops up…  Look at chatroulette.com and the ease with which someone can show you their masturbation technique, whether you asked or not.  I’ve even had people trying to converse in real life about other peoples status updates.  A conversation about someones opinion which was expressed on facebook.com, told second hand…  This is not my idea of a good chat, and it certainly isn’t what I expected the future to be like.

The page ‘Everybody Draw Mohammad Day – May 20th, 2010′ claims to discuss the brutal and radical aspects of Islam.  Although the photos are mainly cartoon-y takes on Mohammad, the Islam faith states that such picture are wrong, and the Prophet shouldn’t be depicted…  But, back to the point at the beginning, why should that include people who don’t believe. I grew up catholic, and thanks to the disgusting way they run their education, I deal with a lot of catholic guilt, this means that sometimes I stop and think, well what if these people are right and I am sinning my way to the depths of the underworld with Satan?  To hell with it,  I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, sinners are much more fun. (Thanks Billy Joel)

Check out the page on facebook.

If it annoys you, you should write a status update about it.  I should point out that while I am vocally against Facebook, I do have a page, and it is the source of a lot of my self loathing.

Interesting Update:  The Pakistani Government have today announced that they have blocked access to YouTube.com, one day after blocking Facebook…  The block is due to the sacrilegious content on the video sharing site…  Also, access to Wikipedia (otherwise known as God) and Flickr, the photo sharing site, has been restricted as of today.

God only knows what happened to xhamster.com and guesshermuff.blogspot.com.

Posted by henryhunter on May 19, 2010. Filed under Henry Hunter Politics - World News,International World News with Henry Hunter,Opinion Editorial,Politics with Henry Hunter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.