[Reader-list] The Facebook shame

[Pawan Durani]

http://www.thenews.com.pk/editorial_detail.asp?id=240311

 The Facebook shame

Urban/urbane

By Ahmad Rafay Alam
There's a new joke doing the rounds: what's the difference between
Facebook and the Lashkar-e-Taiba? Answer: Facebook is banned in
Pakistan.

The Lahore High Court's un-technical appreciation of social networking
sites, the mechanics of the Internet and its order to enforce a ban on
Facebook are matched only by ludicrousness of the petition seeking the
ban and the offensive prank that started this entire episode.

Here's another joke doing the rounds: Facebook has nothing to worry
about. It can always re-appear under another name (Jamaat-ul-Facebook,
anyone?).

In Muhammad Mahboob vs The State (PLD 2002 Lahore 587), Mr Justice Ali
Nawaz Chohan, dismissed evidence that had convicted a man of blasphemy
as "unbelievable". While doing so, the court quoted an article, "What
is Blasphemy", by Ayaz Amir on February 27, 2002 (when Ayaz Sahib
wrote for another paper): "The greatest blasphemy of all is a child
going hungry, a child condemned to the slow death of starvation. The
miscarriage of justice is blasphemy. Misgovernment is blasphemy. An
unconscionable gap between rich and poor is blasphemy. Denial of
treatment to the sick, denial of education to the child, are alike
examples of blasphemy."

My friend Adil Najam posted the following on Pakistaniat.com
("Facebook Fiasco: What would Muhammad (PBUH) do?": "The one thing I
am absolutely positive of, is that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) would not
have done what we are doing now: making an international public
spectacle of ourselves. Most likely he would have just walked away and
ignored (as he did those who threw garbage on him), he might have
negotiated with Facebook on the basis of their own stated rules (the
Hudabia model), he might have reasoned with the detractors. Nearly
certainly Muhammad (PBUH) would have handled it with grace and with
composure. Most importantly, the Prophet (PBUH) would have kept
focusing on his own actions and proving his point with his own deeds
rather than with slogans and banners."

One thing about this entire banning Facebook ado is the level of
organisation displayed across the country. I may not agree with what
they have managed to do, but I do appreciate that they could use
Facebook (as many did) to organise their protests. Today I learn that
the women's wing of the Jamat-e-Islami is organising a protest against
Facebook. Never mind that it has just been reported that a teenager
was raped for four months in Lahore, the ladies of the JI (women's
wing) have something to protest on this sunny May day.

We are a country entirely devoid of a sense of irony. Just before the
PTA got around to enforcing the ban, someone I know updated her
Facebook profile to inform people how pleased she was that Facebook
had been banned.

I have used Facebook over the last year and a half to promote a
cycling initiative aimed at raising awareness about sustainable urban
planning, public transport and the importance of public space. Each
week, friends and I would post onto our Facebook page, Critical Mass
Lahore, inviting others to come join us for our trips through and
around the city. In Islamabad and Karachi, too, urban activists used
Facebook to promote similar cycling events in their cities. At the
beginning of this year, the Shehr section of this paper's News on
Sunday pages, voted Critical Mass Lahore and Zimmedar Shehri as two of
the best things to have happened to Lahore in 2009. Zimmedar Shehri
also used Facebook to launch and manage its incredibly popular
campaign to get your hands dirty, literally, and clean up the country.
Rise Pakistan, another social activism organisation with over 10,000
Facebook members, is also rendered paralysed. Someone I know runs
their business on Facebook. Well, her business has been halted by the
High Court order.

There is simply no justification – legal, ethical, moral, religious –
for the High Court to have ordered a ban on the social network page.
Our law is crystal clear: A person's rights cannot be impinged upon
without notice. There are well over 40 million Facebook users in
Pakistan. The alleged blasphemy is supposed to be taking place in the
United States. Under what legal framework is it permissible for the
rights of the overwhelming majority of lawful users of Facebook to be
affected in this way? As a lawyer, I fail to understand both the
petition and the High Court's order.

This morning, via a text message sent to me by my mobile phone
provider, I was informed that, on account of the High Court decision,
the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had also ordered the shutting
down of Blackberry's messenger service. What common sense is being
applied here? I have a contract with my mobile phone provider which,
to my knowledge, neither my provider nor I have violated. I am at a
loss to understand what legal justification exists to deprive me of my
contractual rights. And it's not just about me: what legal sense is
there in taking an action that has an immediately detrimental effect
to the work of thousands of Pakistanis.

There is now news that the free open-source encyclopaedia Wikipedia,
has been shut down. There are also rumours to the effect that Youtube,
which is a website which I use to watch television programmes and
download the intellectually stimulating Ted Talks, have been blocked
by the PTA as well.

Our response to the derogatory and blasphemous acts of others has been
to harm only ourselves. The Lahore High Court is party to this
shoot-yourself-in-the-foot approach. As someone said, banning Facebook
is just like taking to Mall Road with Molotov cocktails. Except, in
this case, the protagonists came from the gates of justice.

Manuel Castells once said that technology can be determined by
political ideology. He referred to the ENIAC as an example: if Soviet
Russia had the same technology as the scientists at MIT, they would
not have used that technology to come up with an iPad. They would have
used the technology, for sure, but their political ideology would not
have directed in the direction of personal communication devices.

Taking Castells' example, I often remind people that, in Pakistan, we
still do not manufacture televisions (we do assemble them, but bear
with me). This is despite the fact that we have the technology to do
so. The reason we don't is because we are still stuck in a political
philosophy that believes that television is a medium by which "alien
culture" is allowed to infiltrate our own. We will never be able to
achieve technical capacity unless our political ideology allows us to.
Now, with the High Court joining the chorus of misunderstanding on the
issue of Facebook, I wonder how we will ever progress.



The writer is an advocate of the high court and a member of the
adjunct faculty at LUMS. He has an interest in urban planning. Email:
ralam at nexlinx.net.pk