Home
Discover Islam
Quran Recitations
Lectures
Fatwa
Articles
Fiqh
E-Books
Women
Boys & Girls 
Articles
Pakistan has banned the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain sacrilegious material, officials have said.
The censorship on Thursday came a day after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered internet service providers to block access to the social network site Facebook because of an online competition to draw the noble Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.
"We have blocked YouTube. At first we blocked the URL (which was carrying this material (of the Prophet, peace be upon him), but there were a lot of complaints about the content," PTA spokesman Khurram Mehran said.
Another PTA official said the action was taken after the agency determined that some caricatures of the Prophet, peace be upon him, were transferred from Facebook to YouTube.
Facebook ban
The PTA had blocked Facebook on Wednesday obeying a Pakistani court decision to ban the site following complaints over a user-generated contest page that encouraged members to post caricatures of Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.
Any images or pictures that depict any prophet or messenger are forbidden and blasphemous by Islamic law.
Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, a major internet service provider, confirmed that PTA had ordered the ban on YouTube indefinitely.
"They ordered the full YouTube site blocked. So that order was implemented by the internet service providers and internet backbone providers," Siraj said.
He told AFP that blocking Facebook and YouTube would slash up to a quarter of all internet traffic in Pakistan.
"These two sites take 20 to 25 per cent of the country's total internet traffic so we are seeing a drop in internet traffic," he said.
Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, said: "It (sacrilegious content) has disturbed and infuriated a lot of people in the country.
"And so now many people are saying that they will block Facebook completely.
"The court has said that this (ban) will continue until the 31st of May. However, after the 31st there will be a decision.
"But there are already a growing number of people who are saying it (Facebook) should be banned completely.
"Hundreds of people have been protesting and it is likely to continue for a few more days."
Pakistan had blocked Youtube in 2007 for about a year in a similar protest against blasphemous videos.
PHOTO CAPTION
Pakistanis protest in Karachi against the published caricatures of the noble Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.
Al-Jazeera
