Pakistan

Countrywide protests against Facebook

Express May 20, 2010

LAHORE: Protests were staged across Pakistan on Thursday to condemn Facebook for allowing a competition to draw blasphemous caricatures feature on the site.

A demonstration was held against the social networking site outside the National Press Club in Islamabad. The local leadership, as well as the women wing of Jamat-e-Islami, along with workers of Jamiat Itehad-ul-Ulema, took part in the demonstration.

Protesters holding banners and placards demanded the government to take up the issue on the international forum. They also demanded the government to end diplomatic ties with countries responsible for the blasphemy.

In Lahore, the Ahl-e-Sunnat Tanzeem took out a rally from Daata Darbar to Charing Cross, chanting slogans against the government for not taking up the issue seriously. Protests were also staged in several areas of south Punjab including Faisalabad where doctors of Allied hospital and students of Punjab Medical College took out a rally.

A rally was also taken out in Quetta by the JUI and several rallies were taken out in Peshawar.

For a complete set of the ongoing protests, click here.

COMMENTS (6)

Azeem | 14 years ago | Reply we should create jobs. that way people wouldnt waste time in protesting.

Chaudhary Shaan | 14 years ago | Reply In order to defend the honor of Holy Prophet(peace be upon him), we, as Muslims, should have zero to complain about.

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Amir Hamza | 14 years ago | Reply Protest rallies against blocking facebook. Beautiful. How much more free time do we have on our hands?

Syed A. Mateen | 14 years ago | Reply I have never seen any Muslim drawing caricatures of any Prophet who was sent in this world. According to our faith and believe, there are 1,24,000 Prophets came in this world and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was the last Prophet. If Muslims have faith and believe in 1,24,000 Prophets than how can they draw caricatures of any Prophet(s)? This is the height of tolerance among the Muslims and despite of this level of tolerance, we are branded as terrorists by the West?

Sidra | 14 years ago | Reply All of this, and then to think we have not as a nation helped in full possible measure the creators of the Facebook group in question achieve their very goals? By providing such elephantine publicity to the group and quite remarkably obliterating our collective sense of forbearance in the process, we couldn't have better done a job of professing the very ideas we sought to suppress. Unfortunate indeed.

Kashan Ahmed | 14 years ago | Reply The people who started that group achieved what they wanted. People with narrow thinking and little access to the world media don't know how these protests make us look in the international stage. I am no way appreciating what that group has to offer and Prophet (PBUH) is as dear to me as it must have been to many of these stupid protesters but I prefer to follow his footsteps and want to confront people with logic and rationality rather shouting slogans and banning websites. No wonder we Pakistanis are producing so many terrorists.

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