There is no shortage of energy in Pakistan. Notwithstanding the sporadic suspensions in the supply of electricity, during a sojourn in Lahore earlier this month, I found myself confronted every day with evidence of reasonably energetic demonstrations and protests related to a broad spectrum of issues ranging from hepatitis awareness to appalling delays in the payment of salaries to government employees.

Oodles of newsprint and endless hours of air time on the numerous television news channels are being devoted, meanwhile, to the relentless confrontation between the executive and the judiciary. Keen to deflect attention from its multiple woes, the government has adopted, inter alia, the strategy of demanding that the Supreme Court make former military dictator Pervez Musharraf answerable for the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) he introduced nearly three years ago.

Musharraf — who has lately indicated an eagerness to re-enter the political fray at an opportune moment, at the helm of yet another faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (one can only wonder whether any other political party anywhere in the world has experienced quite as many incarnations) — has much to answer for, but it’s hardly a secret that he wasn’t particularly keen on the NRO.

He was pushed towards it by an Anglo-American alliance that had begun to doubt the general’s fealty and wanted him to share power with Benazir Bhutto — who had succeeded yet again in convincing Washington and London that her loyalty to the West was second to none.

She was understandably unwilling, though, to risk incarceration or face the courts on her return to Pakistan. Hence the NRO, barring which, chances are she would have remained in exile — and alive. It is therefore somewhat facetious for her heirs — apparent or presumptive — to seek to shift the blame for legislation without which they could hardly have hoped to occupy the posts they hold today.

Far more remarkable, though, is evidence of their unwillingness to investigate the circumstances of Benazir’s assassination. The committee of inquiry instituted to find out who ordered the scene of the crime to be scrubbed clean before much forensic evidence could be collected offers a classic instance of tragedy being turned into farce, reinforcing suspicions that the Zardari regime has little interest in conclusively establishing who killed Benazir.

The haste with which Asif Ali Zardari pardoned his leading lieutenant, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, after the latter faced arrest following the Lahore High Court’s decision to turn down his appeal in a corruption-related conviction, shows, meanwhile, that the president is quite capable of quick action when the stakes are sufficiently high. It was equally unsurprising that when federal ministers were instructed to be present at this week’s NRO-related Supreme Court appearance by the law minister, Babar Awan, the interior minister was exempted from that obligation.

It may well be purely coincidental that Malik and Awan were both passengers in the designated back-up vehicle that singularly failed to come to Benazir’s aid during her moments of direct need on Dec 27, 2007, but all manner of uncomplimentary conjecture is inevitable in the absence of even a semi-credible explanation for this apparently odd behaviour.

Throw in concerns about whether it’s entirely constitutional for Zardari to be simultaneously head of state and co-chairman of the PPP, whether it’s acceptable for a so-called core committee to supersede the party’s national executive, and potentially disastrous disagreements with a leading ally, the MQM, and there can be little question that the government was desperate for a circuit-breaker. And, sure enough, a distraction turned up.

The bizarre demonstrations against a social networking website were not unprecedented: we’ve been there before, in the context of the Danish cartoons a few years ago, and before that the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s The SatanicVerses. In both those cases, it would have made considerable sense to ignore the ostensible provocations. Yet those who took offence played a monumental role in publicising Rushdie’s mediocre novel and the caricatures that would otherwise have remained restricted to a minuscule section of the European press,

Likewise, the campaign against the page on Facebook calling for making drawings of the Prophet (PBUH) ensured widespread dissemination of what is, at best, an irrelevance. It could safely be said that the majority of the protesters who took to the streets in many a Pakistani city and town would have found it difficult to explain to anyone the nature of the Internet, let alone the particularities of Facebook.

A complaint led the Lahore High Court (LHC) to decree that Facebook — the entire website, not just the offending page — be blocked until the end of the month. Similar action followed against YouTube and a further 800 websites. The legal bans are likely to be renewed when they expire. But why stop there? Why not outlaw the Internet altogether? That may not save much electricity, but it will surely help to keep the nation shrouded in ignorance; it could serve as a virtual burka without so much as a slit for sore eyes.

As anyone even vaguely familiar with the Internet knows, no user is obliged to visit any given page. In other countries, efforts to block websites pandering to paedophiles or disseminating racist or obscurantist venom have generally been less than completely successful. The Internet’s incredible usefulness as a tool easily overrides its potential as a repository for all manner of nonsense. Censorship, broadly, has thus far proved futile.

Those likely to be offended by irreverent caricatures should effortlessly be able to avoid calling them up on their screens. The fact that the provocation primarily elicited a response only from sections of Pakistani society could be misconstrued as substantiation of their self-ordained status as outstanding defenders of the faith. In fact it only serves as evidence of dense narrow-mindedness.

In Pakistan today, there is no dearth of issues about which citizens ought to get worked up. But there really should be no place on the list for a solitary Facebook page. In this context at least, there’s considerably greater common sense in the rest of the Muslim world’s relative indifference to an irrelevant provocation. The Islamophobic intent of some of the contributors to the Facebook event is unlikely, in the final analysis, to stir half as much prejudice as the fanatical Pakistani reaction.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com