When petitioned for a ban, the court was told that a website of the name FB has posted blasphemous content. This assertion is incorrect. FB is a public forum and is not responsible for individual's postings. Pakistanis fail to recognise how FB is not posting anything. Its open to offence jut as it is to criticism. There are three issues here.
One is this separation which the Pakistanis failed to recognise when protesting the Danish cartoons. Then the problem was not realising that a government cannot go and censor a free newspaper (Jylland Posten in that case). Same for FB today. The entire argument at its heart demands intervention by an authority to curtail actions OUTSIDE the recourse to law and regulation (the Danish constitution back then) and FB privacy policy today. We are so accustomed to illegal violations of the individual liberty that it has become a part of the solutions that we think to our problems. We are effectively demanding the rule of law to be violated for another.
Secondly, we fail to use the system in place to solve the problem rather than crying about it (or burning tyres, more accurately). In this case that could have meant two things. One, to use FB to achieve a greater understanding of HOW Muslims view freedom of Speech and hate Speech in relation to each other. Explain to others what our non-eurocentric view of the qualification of rights is. Secondly, we could've followed Austria and Germany (Holocaust Denial FB pages are inaccessible there) and made the pages unavailable in Muslim countries. Every time we react so belligerently, all we achieve is to re enforce the views which caused such criticisms of us in the first place and absolutely fail to solve the primary problem by convincing others to our views. (What assurance is their that many in the west will not be encouraged to further their politically incorrect criticisms of our religion if all we do is cry and burn ourselves to censorship).
Thridly, the very idea that we are happy about the ban is disturbing. This has nothing to do with free-speech or hate-speech (which ironically are two different reasons either side is accusing the other of its actions failing to even recognise what the other's actions are all about). In the censorship context it has more to do with our unanswered questions about the relationship between the citizen and the state. Ive heard many older people say this before, "we as a people are slave-minded". Now it seems to be rather accurate. We wish to be collectively dictated to, not asked. Do be ordered so as not to have to initiate. This substantiates for many who, although incorrectly, saw elements of Fascism in how we practice our religion. Is it not fascist that we expect the government to decide how who when where to tax. What to be taught. What to watch and listen to. How to pray and behave? What laws and acts to support. And above all to restrict the answer of all these questions to be decided by the government. The parliament is run by a few handful in the government, so when I say government I dont mean parliament. We're a strange mix of aspiring to be economically socialist (the great joy we displayed at the ridiculous economic policies of the Punjab government simply exploiting our poverty e.g. the indirected subsidies of the roti and the new luxury car tax) and socially fascist at the same time (compare these days with the NSDP's censorship and publicity and the control of the reichstag by a few of Hitller's cronies. What a strange mess of a mix, SOCIO-Fascist. Somebody call the tea partiers and tell them that Barack Obama is not the Socialist Fascist (an ironic word considering they are both extreme of right or of left), its the Pakistani mentality that is.
A disclaimer:
Nothing I've said has anything to do with Religious intolerance or freedom of speech and ridiculing religious symbols. Ive only talked about our responses. So, please save yourself the breath and dont reply with a: "how would you feel if I insulted you mother" or a " We respect their prophets why don't they ours" Its about time we learn the importance of RELEVANCE.
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