COMMENT: Withdrawing from the web? —Zaair Hussain

So long as we continue to wear our emotions on our sleeves, we remain in a state of wretched vulnerability: a word hurled like a stone across oceans can shatter our normalcy and switch off the entire nation like a light going out in the glittering globe

Online censorship is a zombie issue, a shambling and soulless monstrosity sustained indefinitely by dark energies when, by any rational trajectory, it should have long succumbed to the cold embrace of eternity.

I find myself reluctantly grappling with an issue I thought inconsequential in the harsh context of Pakistan’s true problems. I can ignore it no longer: Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Blackberry Messenger fell like dominos — or US investment banks — all guilty of similar and singular charges: ‘allowing’ users to post blasphemous content.

Surely, I felt, we would see that this intrusive policy could just as easily extend to emails, text messages, physical letters and, indeed, paper. All of those are mediums capable of hosting and disseminating blasphemous content — or any content at all.

But recently, a petitioner in Bahawalpur demanded a ban on a flotilla of search engines including Google. Google, on which half the offices of the world rely. Google, which is not even a website. Google, that can no more host malicious content than it can host malicious thoughts.

Under the Musharraf emergency, the galvanised middle and upper classes of the country came together in unprecedented unity and, in a steady tilt that moved the most cynical of hearts, seemed to strike a mortal blow against the dragon of censorship. Now, the beast has returned, its teeth still sharp and breath still fiery, claiming to be the enemy of our enemy. And we have invited it into our homes, and pressed it to our bosoms.

Are we so gullible? This manner of anonymous, long-distance hate speech survives only by our sufferance, feeding upon our anger and resentment, on our displays of hurt defiance. It can do nothing more than challenge sensibilities if not ignored; it is surely powerless in any way that matters.

But the erosion of freedom and the erosion of choice can hurt us in ways material and spiritual, some of which are terrifyingly clear, and some of which, no doubt, we have yet to imagine.

We must demand to be treated as more than children or vagrants with no sense of right and wrong. Those who see blasphemy in the vastness of the internet, like an oil slick on the ocean, will steer clear of it or report it. It is madness to lock ourselves away from the open seas. To make a hermit of our nation would do the world and ourselves — particularly ourselves — a terrible disservice. Local identity and global connectivity are not doomed to be nemeses. Indeed, before they had their voices silenced, many concerned Muslims were using Facebook to protest the hurtful images in greater number than the people participating in the event itself.

The world will never run short of the mean-spirited. From a platform of anonymity, they can lob insults while skirting just clear of local ‘hate speech’ laws. So long as we continue to wear our emotions on our sleeves, we remain in a state of wretched vulnerability: a word hurled like a stone across oceans can shatter our normalcy and switch off the entire nation like a light going out in the glittering globe. We speak of protecting our national dignity, but we have become sport for hateful and immature persons around the world; surely our dignity cannot allow this.

We are staggering, also, in our estimation of our significance. The court was misled to believe that Pakistan had some 40 million Facebook users; the number was closer to two million. From the man on the streets to the man in the drawing room, the nation smugly contemplated CEO Zuckerberg, who we imagined would be weeping in his newfound poverty.

Two million non-paying users being blocked from their accounts — out of an online viewer-ship of nearly ‘half a billion’ — was never going to make much of a ripple. Nevertheless, the country made official demands of Interpol that they arrest Zuckerberg and the co-founders of Facebook on charges of blasphemy. Will we next demand that the owners of Google be tried and hanged for creating algorithms that search the Internet at the user’s request? We may as well.

Across different Islamic traditions, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was attributed the power, through Angel Gabriel, to crush his tormentors by moving mountains. He chose restraint. We, conversely, would cripple ourselves by kicking over molehills and calling them mountains. We are fooling nobody; however terrible our bark, we have no bite. And nobody knows that better than those who participated in this hate speech.

Optimists, with some justification, proffer a positive interpretation: compared to the cartoon riots four years ago, wherein we ripped apart our cities in animal fury while the provocateurs mocked us from a world away, these protests and bans were tame affairs. They involved Pakistani institutions and protests that were on the whole peaceful, if occasionally over-spirited.

The pessimist in me, however, leans towards a darker construction: our institutions intervened precisely because they feared not faraway blasphemers, but the fury of their own people, a wounded instinct that should be guided to peace, not indulged at every turn.

None of this, I must clarify, is a vindication of the incomplete and oftentimes completely skewed understanding western nations have of the issue. Almost nowhere is ‘freedom of speech’, a phrase on a golden pedestal, absolute. Nations the world over have laws against slander and hate speech, and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is not a ‘public figure’ the way the term is understood; he is an intensely private matter for more than a billion people. The difference between the two is interstellar in magnitude.

But the only way other cultures will possibly understand that — and so much more — is if we engage with them. We are free to bring our unique ideas and philosophies and concerns to the table, and I believe the world would be richer for our expressions. But to refuse the table itself is a different matter altogether.

A clear choice is before us: we can step forth into the frightening promise of the future, or remain in the familiar darkness. Perhaps if we had the will or wherewithal to create a future less bleak for the people of our country, they would be more inclined to consider it.

Till then, I suppose, cry havoc and let slip the barks of war.

Zaair Hussain is a Lahore-based freelance writer. He can be reached at zaairhussain@gmail.com