Lahore High Court in an amazing decision yesterday ordered to ban what is called internet these days, citing the presence of sacrilegious material on websites. As long as specific sites containing sacrilegious material are banned, the decision would be appreciated not only in Pakistan but in other Muslim countries as well.

Blocking certain websites containing offensive, violent or disturbing contents is a practice around the world. For example in Pakistan, PTA have already blocked sites , which they consider ,containing anti-Pakistan Propaganda and those run mainly by Baloch separatist like BLA.

Similarly in the present case, it would have been much wiser decision to order PTA to figure out sites containing anti-Islamic material and then these sites could have been blocked rather this could be made a continuous process i.e. as soon as PTA notice such sites, they are blocked straight away. But in a most amazing decision, LHC have banned famous search engines like Google, yahoo, msn as well as e mail communication through msn and hotmail and famous video sharing site YouTube. This decision also shows that how up to date are our Judges with present day technology and it seems that they have no idea whatsoever how internet works.

I remember a famous incident during Taliban era in Afghanistan reported at that time in various newspapers in 1997-1998 ; Taliban Govt. got some computers and Monitors as an aid from some NGO. Question arose that whether computers should be allowed to use in “Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan” or not, after various consultations and taking into account all aspects of Computers, Taliban Qazi decided that CPU can be allowed to use but Monitors can’t be allowed.

By comparing these two decisions one by Taliban Qazi in 90 s and present decision by LHC in 2010 , one must admit that Talibans were one step ahead and they clearly won the contest while even after making this decision LHC is still on losing side. So, Mullah Omer is the winner and Khawja Sharif is still a loser unless his court makes some more effective decisions.

I have one proposal for LHC to balance the score with Taliban and if some Lawyers are reading this note then he should immediately file petition in LHC based on following proposal: Proposal is straight forward, as much of the sacrilegious material is also in printed and published form and is available around the world, so a ban on Paper and Printing should be immediately implemented. By this, Khawja Sharif court would be level in score with Mullah Omer Regime.

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