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Expats lose contacts after FB ban in Pakistan
Users of Facebook in the UAE, who have been cut off from friends and contacts in Pakistan after the site was banned for posting ‘blasphemous’ material, have said the ban was justified.
A huge number of users in the UAE said they missed their online friends after a Pakistani court banned the networking site on Wednesday for allowing the “Draw Muhammad Contest” due to be held on May 20. However, others said the ban had violated their right to communicate.
Soon after, YouTube, Wikipedia and other websites were also blocked in an attempt to prevent the content from leaking into the country after hundreds of Pakistanis protested on the streets against the contest. Any representation of Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) is considered unIslamic and blasphemous by Muslims. They, however, supported the ban saying that it was justified for the cause of Islam.
Though the page link was accessible in the UAE until late Wednesday, by Thursday the Facebook administration had blocked all links to the page. However, within minutes of the removal of the main page, another page had sprung up.
“I am already missing my 346 friends on FB, but I think the ban is justified,” said Maheen Qureshi, a student. “No one has the right to make fun of anyone else’s beliefs,” she said. “I am surprised that no other Muslim country has stood up against the act.”
According to estimates, FB has over 600,000 users in the Arab world.
Similar views were expressed by a number of other users who said that the contest was only meant to provoke Muslims. Mobisher Rabbani said, “Boycotting is not the solution. There are other ways of fighting the enemy.” His FB contacts have reduced from 3,298 to 3,065 since Wednesday.
“The government should not have blocked the entire website but only the link. Users should have been given the choice to exercise their democratic right to deactivate their accounts and show their protest,” he added.
Publication of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark’s embassy in Islamabad in 2008 that killed six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.
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