Pakistan to censor “Blasphemy”

According to the AP, Pakistan is going to begin monitoring seven major Internet Sites for links that lead to offensive content. The plan is to then block the links without disturbing the rest of the site.

The seven sites to be monitored are Yahoo, Google, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Amazon and Bing.

Allow me to suggest that the Pakistani’s might find themselves blocking a lot of links.

Pakistan will also continue to block some 17 sites they deem offensive to Muslims.

And who pray tell decides what is offensive, sacrilegious or blasphemous?

That’s always the problem with censorship. Someone has to decide what to censor. Who is the authority on what is offensive? And where does it stop? If you allow blocking “sacrilegious” content today, what’s to prevent blocking political content tomorrow and advertising content the day after that and ultimately anything someone in power decides he doesn’t like?

It’s a slippery slope and yes I’m aware of the logical fallacy associated with slippery slope arguments. I’m not saying it will happen, I’m simply asking what’s to prevent it from happening.

So are Muslims little children that aren’t capable of deciding for themselves which websites to frequent and which to avoid? Or is it that Islam is so easy to expose as a fraudulent philosophy?

I say the same thing to Muslims that I say to Christians; if you have the “truth,” then bring it to the open forum of knowledgeable adult discussion. Let’s compare it against other “truths” and see which “truths” prosper and which fail.