ISLAMABAD – Pakistan on Thursday condemned caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared on Facebook, blocking the social networking site and YouTube in a growing backlash over Internet "sacrilege."
Several thousand activists protested against the drawings and denounced the West in an expression of outrage that sparked comparisons with riots across the Muslim world in 2006 over drawings published in European newspapers.
The caricatures appeared on Facebook after a private user asked people to submit drawings of the Prophet Mohammed in an online competition that sparked fury in conservative Muslim Pakistan.
Sweden said Thursday it had closed its embassy in Islamabad for more than two weeks due to the security situation, refusing to say whether any direct threats had been issued against the mission.
An al-Qaida front organization has offered 100,000 dollars to anyone who kills Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has angered many Muslims by drawing the Prophet with the body of a dog.
"We strongly condemn the publication of blasphemous caricatures of our holy Prophet on Facebook," foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters in the capital Islamabad.
"Such malicious and insulting attacks hurt the feelings of Muslims around the world," he said.
Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and Muslims across the globe staged angry protests over the publication of satirical cartoons of Mohammed in European newspapers four years ago.
In 2008, a suicide attack outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad killed eight people. al-Qaida claimed the attack to avenge the cartoons.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) extended a ban on Facebook, ordered by a court until May 31, to wildly popular video sharing website YouTube and restricted Wikipedia.
The PTA said it had blocked more than 450 links to derogatory material on the Internet, defending the move "in view of growing sacrilegious content."
The regulator called on Facebook and YouTube to resolve the matter as soon as possible in a manner that "ensures religious harmony and respect".
Pakistan also briefly banned YouTube in February 2008 in a similar protest against "blasphemous" cartoons of Mohammed.
Facebook expressed disappointment at being blocked and said it was considering whether to make the offending page inaccessible in Pakistan.
Wahaj us Siraj, a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, said blocking Facebook and YouTube would slash up to 25 per cent of all Internet traffic in Pakistan.
Around 400 people including about 100 women from the main Islamic opposition party Jamaat-e-Islami staged a rally in Islamabad late Thursday.
Carrying banners that read "Blasphemous act is punishable by death" and "We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the holy Prophet" the protesters chanted slogans before dispersing peacefully, witnesses said.
An earlier rally by the party’s student wing called for a boycott of Facebook. Shouting "Al-Jihad, Al-Jihad" they denounced Israel and urged people to lay down their lives for Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
In the eastern city of Lahore, several thousand people, including members of banned organization Jamaat-ud Dawa – considered a front for the militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks – organized five separate rallies.
They chanted "down with America" and called for an end to diplomatic relations with Denmark, Sweden and Norway, trampling flags of those countries into the ground as an expression of disgust, an AFP reporter said.
"The Muslim nation should announce a Jihad against such blasphemous acts. We should stand up against these conspiracies", said Afzal Qadri, leader of the Tanzeem Ahle Sunnat party.
In Karachi, about 200 people rallied to condemn the United States, where Facebook is based and branding the makers of "blasphemous caricatures" the "biggest terrorists of the world", said an AFP reporter.
But the bans also sparked debate about freedom of expression in a country with a relatively free media, an estimated two to 2.5 million Facebook users and a sizeable, largely Western-educated elite.
Some intellectuals and members of the elite disapproved of the ban, despite their anger over the caricatures, saying censorship could fan extremism in a country already hit hard by Taliban and al-Qaida-linked violence.
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