The Islamic nation of Pakistan has instructed local ISPs to block local user access to the popular micro-blogging service Twitter due to its commission of “blasphemy” on Sunday.
Mohammed Yaseen, the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) stated that the ban was “done under the directions of the Ministry of Information Technology. It’s because of blasphemous content.”
“[The Ministry has] been discussing with [Twitter] for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content,” he said.
The content in question? Tweets discussing a contest in which caricatures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad were to be submitted. Unfortunately for Twitter, which refused to remove the “offending” tweets, representations of Muhammad are considered “un-Islamic” and blasphemous and are cause for censorship in the majority Muslim nation.
Twitter is a very popular service in Pakistan.