Sunday 20 May 2012

Old Tactics Losing Control

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan's honourary government banned Twitter for around 8 hours due to 'blasphemous content' being published by some people (who may be Twitter's out-of-bounds children, the way our authorities were trying to make it control those unnamed individuals). Funnily many tweet-a-holics didn't have a clue about any blasphemous competition going on on twitter till the government imposed the ban and announced the reason. Not surprisingly, after the uproar the ban caused, the micro-blogging site was back on. A real in-your-face moment that must have been for the IT minister (who, btw, has been trending in Pakistan alongside #TwitterBan, a short while after the ban was imposed).

But anyway, that's not the point. The point is what happened at the end of the day? People across Pakistan tweeted against the ban and condemned the authorities for being so dumb and stupid (again). If there's one thing Pakistani government can do best it is to help people find illegal ways to do extremely normal things by imposing a ban on them. A few years ago it was Facebook, banned for the same reason. Few hours after howling in pain and experiencing withdrawal symptoms, almost everyone was back on the site, uploading pictures, updating statuses and all the other useless and harmless things we do on Facebook, using alternate proxies. I really wanted to stick my tongue out at the Muslim government whose interior minister doesn't even know how to recite a basic Surah from the Holy Quran. But that is not blasphemous. Nope. Because it's a Muslim who's reciting his holy book wrong, not a Christian or Hindu or other such things. Interestingly, no other Muslim country expressed its outrage the same way. 

Social networking and blogging websites are the biggest platform for anyone to promote what they believe in. These sites help people communicate and unite under the flag of their similarities. For a country like ours, which lacks this very element, these websites can be a great platform for us to start and promote positive movements and emotions, only if our dear government let us. These sites are where we can share whatever's on our mind without caring about any damned authority. Why does this Muslim government of ours fail to notice the hundreds and thousands of pages on Facebook promoting Islam and its teachings in the most peaceful and tolerant way than any of our mullahs and preachers? If we want to condemn the sites for what blasphemous content posted by individuals, we should applaud them for holy and positive content posted by its users as well. Don't they deserve it? 

My message to the Pakistani government: it'll do us and you more good if you try to solve the violent war that is going on between religious sects in the country. You see, because in these not-so-online wars, people are actually dying with all the sensitive feelings they have for religion. And they can't even condemn you for it.

8 comments:

  1. government passes decisions without really caring about consequences then has to change them, only to look like fools. high time they grow up!
    sidra rizvi

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  2. totally agreed.... u simply have no power .. neither domestically nor internationally.... all these cry baby acts make us look more emotional, insignificant and clueless about our ideology ... we are simply drunk with the notion of being superior whereas in reality we stand no where.... :(

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  3. we r incompetent people and also think with emotions. This is the reason there is no need to make us fool.

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  4. @Narjis, we can stand somewhere if people with power in our country would let us think freely. Like the report in Dawn said: 'why Pakistanis could not be entrusted to decide for themselves whether or not to look at a website.'

    @Anonymous I don't really get your point. Thanks for reading though :)

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  5. well I do get your point and I do agree pretty much to what you are saying but as I mentioned in one of Farah Jamil's blog if you follow her I think banning such websites to a wide extent helps. As today life is more cyber orientated and even kids are using internet and all the social networking sites. It is ok for people like us or fully grown up to watch that blasphemous content but if a child sees it he/she will defintly have some effect on his mind for example take YouTube and the video against Prophet(PBH) since I am not living in Pakistan any more so I got the opportunity to watch it and I think if it was not banned kids may feel the curiously to watch it and it defintly would have effected their minds. So in short I know how irritating and stupid we think about our government's such actions but if you see a brighter side we wouldn't deny the fact.

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  6. The thing is in Pakistan most kids use internet under adult supervision. It won't be easy for them to access the blasphemous content. The point is the more harp about it the more attention it'll get. It's an amateur movie made by a lunatic. It was best left alone, we've only harmed ourselves by being so sensitive about it.

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    1. well I disagree that kids are using internet under adult supervision may be because the area I am from adults are not even bothered what their kid is doing and they are known as 'modern people' but yea I do respect that in other areas people might be caring about it. It was an amateur movie but the way they were sharing it was wild and in my opinion if one stops using others product is the best way to show ones anger rather than what happened in Pakistan

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