Infrastructure

Home page

Infrastructure

Pakistan bans Facebook

20 May 2010 08:50 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. A Pakistani court has called for a temporary national Facebook ban. The ruling comes as a response to a page on the social network promoting an event slated to take place tomorrow, called â€œEverybody Draw Mohammed Day!â€ The page has more than 47,000 â€œlikesâ€ and more than 3,000 user-submitted images, The Big Money reported.

The depiction of Mohammed is considered blasphemous in Islam, so the upcoming event has ignited protests in Pakistan and around the world. The concept of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" is the brainchild of the Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris. She introduced the idea in a poster responding to the recent censorship of a South Park episode that touched on the subject. Norris only meant to show her opposition to the censorship with a â€œone-off cartoon." She tells the Washington Post, "The results have shown to be vitriolic and worse, offensive to Muslims who had nothing to do with the censorship issue I was inspired to draw about in the first place."

Pakistani officials seem worried that the event and Facebook activity around it could lead to violent protests, not unlike the backlash sparked by Danish newspaper cartoons depicting Mohammed five years ago. BBC notes that when that uprising erupted, â€œfive people were killed in Pakistan.â€