The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) discovered the blasphemous pages on Facebook a few days ago and later informed the ministry to decide on the issue.
Facebook’s page portrays a picture of a girl having a book pretending to be Quran in her one hand and stick on her another hand. The message mentioned under it is “They preach that Islam is religion of peace and freedom which is hypocrisy in reality. So as long as this hypocrisy goes, this fire is on Quran and I will continue to do so for unlimited time. Also I encourage you to set fire on Quran.”
It had 1726 fans across the world but its wall contains messages against religions especially Islam and Christianity. A couple of pages have also been designed on Facebook against it. This page contains hundreds of insulting photos on Islam, Muslims and Quran.
“The ministry is going to block all such material containing blasphemous material as soon as it receives recommendations on the modus operandi,” said Nagibullah Malik, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication secretary.
He added that the ministry had approached the management of Facebook over the issue, and had directed it to take “prompt action” against the page.
“The ministry had raised the same issue with the Facebook management in May 2010, when the website was blocked in Pakistan. It was directed to stop all such activities hurting the sentiments of Pakistani subscribers,” he said. “The ministry and its subordinate authorities will not tolerate websites that have blasphemous content”, Malik said.
Pakistani authorities earlier blocked Facebook from May 19 to 30, following the directives of Lahore High Court (LHC). The PTA also banned 17 other websites last month containing material that they said incited violence against Islam. A committee was formed last month to monitor websites for sacrilegious material. The PTA and other Internet service providers are members of the committee. A petition has been filed before the Lahore High Court (LHC) seeking permanent ban on Facebook.
The latest page carrying blasphemous content appeared on Facebook recently, urging subscribers to mark the September 11 attack anniversary.
By: Munahil Ali, PARKSPIDER.COM
