LAHORE,
Pakistan – Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook on Monday after officials from the
social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents, a top
information technology official said.
The move
came almost two weeks after Pakistan imposed the ban amid anger over a page
that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many
Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.
"In
response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us
that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL," said
Najibullah Malik, secretary of Pakistan's information technology ministry,
referring to the technical term for a Web page.
Facebook
assured the Pakistani government that "nothing of this sort will
happen in the future," Malik said.
Officials
from the website could not immediately be reached for comment. They said
earlier the contents of the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" page did
not violate Facebook's terms.
The page
encouraged users to post images of the prophet to protest threats made by a
radical Muslim group against the creators of the American
TV series "South Park" for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during
an episode earlier this year.
Pakistan
blocked Facebook on May 19 following a ruling by one of the country's highest
courts. The Lahore High Court reversed its ruling Monday because of Facebook's
response, Malik said.
As of
midday, access to Facebook inside Pakistan was still restricted.
But Malik said the government has issued instructions for Internet service
providers to restore access to the website.
Users
outside the country confirmed the page that sparked the recent uproar was no
longer accessible.
The
government will continue to block some Web pages that contain
"sacrilegious material," but Malik declined to specify which ones.
The
Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by
student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the
protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing
the page.
Bangladesh
also decided to block Facebook on Sunday but said it would restore access to
the site if the offensive material was removed.
It is not
the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger. Pakistan and
other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and
again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected
al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six
people.
Anger
over the Facebook controversy also prompted the Pakistani government to block access to YouTube
briefly, saying there was growing sacrilegious content on the video sharing
website. The government restored access to YouTube last week but said it would
continue to block videos offensive to Muslims that are posted on the site.
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