Petition for permanent banning of Facebook in Pakistan
Press Trust of India/ M Zulqernain / Lahore Jul 27, 2010, 16:35 IST
Even as the Jamaat-ud-Dawah mounts pressure on Pakistani authorities to slap a ban on Facebook, a petition filed in a court has sought a permanent bar on access to the social networking website due to the launch of an "anti-Islam competition".
Acting on the petition filed by Judicial Activism Panel chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique, Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court today sought the stance of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to the demand for a permanent ban on Facebook.
In his petition, Siddique sought a permanent ban on the website as it was hosting a page with a contest named "Everybody Burn Quran Day". Siddique said in his petition that Facebook was also displaying blasphemous pictures of "Khana-e-Kaaba".
He asked the court to declare such acts as "illegal, un-Islamic, unconstitutional and against the injunctions of Islam." He also asked the court to launch contempt of court proceedings against the website’s owners and to punish them accordingly.
Siddique asked the court to direct authorities to ensure that no blasphemous material is published, displayed, visualized or aired in the country.
The JuD, which has been has been organising protests every Friday against the US and other Western countries for committing blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed, has been pressuring authorities to ban Facebook for anti-Islamic contents.
The website was briefly banned in Pakistan for hosting a page with a competition for blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
The Bahawalpur bench of the Lahore High Court had issued an order to ban 17 websites for alleged blasphemous content but later cancelled the directive.
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