‘Don’t Kill the Messenger’

It has been more than three months since the pop­u­lar video shar­ing web­site YouTube has been banned in Pak­istan. One fine evening in late Decem­ber, it was restored for two hours and then banned again. This man­i­fests a state of con­fu­sion pre­vail­ing among author­i­ties on how to deal with such emerg­ing prob­lems.

The opin­ion in favor of the ban rests on var­i­ous argu­ments. For some it is a means to answer the high­hand­ed­ness of ‘west­ern’ media which they per­ceive as a weapon to sub­ju­gate Mus­lims. For oth­ers it is evi­dence of their love for Prophet (PBUH) since YouTube is car­ry­ing blas­phe­mous mate­r­i­al. Some would take a more prag­mat­ic stance, espe­cial­ly the author­i­ties, call­ing it a nec­es­sary step to appease enraged Mus­lims because oth­er­wise it would result in riots.

All these posi­tions miss one very impor­tant aspect of the debate: what do we ulti­mate­ly win and lose by ban­ning YouTube, or any oth­er media, for that mat­ter? Before its ban­ning, YouTube was the top most viewed web­site in Pak­istan. Even after the ban, it is still among the top five, used most­ly through prox­ies, which shows the lev­el of pub­lic demand. But in the process of access­ing through proxy, the amount of time and ener­gy wast­ed trans­lates into loss­es worth bil­lions.

Media in today’s world is like the emis­saries of old­er times. What­ev­er bad news they brought, it was an under­stood fact that the mes­sen­ger should not be killed. Could Muham­mad XII, the King of Grana­da, stop the fall of Alham­ra by killing the mes­sen­ger and set­ting the let­ters alight? No. In fact, mass media today is much more than that. In today’s knowl­edge-based economies, it con­sti­tutes the essen­tial glue which binds togeth­er dis­parate inter­ests and insti­tu­tions to ensure nego­ti­a­tion and har­mo­ny. If some­thing dis­rup­tive is spread through media, we can rem­e­dy it too only through media. Cen­sor­ship, on the oth­er hand, means let­ting the false­hood stay, hence increas­ing the mis­un­der­stand­ing.

In the past, before the advent of the inter­net, cen­sor­ship, in one way or the oth­er, ruled Pak­istan most of the time. It was a far more con­ve­nient tool back then. Inter­net, by its very nature, is a mass gen­er­at­ed and con­sent based medi­um. It can­not be banned eas­i­ly. The attempts to do so have proven futile and counter-pro­duc­tive all over the world. Pak­istan needs to learn from this. The ban on YouTube must be lift­ed imme­di­ate­ly and the cit­i­zens of this coun­try should regain access to infor­ma­tion, as is their fun­da­men­tal right.

—Writ­ten By Rab Nawaz

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 6)