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Controversial Muslim Cleric Busted Being Smuggled Across Mexico Border

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric – banned from France and Canada – curled up in the boot.

Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.

The 43-year-old was deported from Canada to his homeland Tunisia in 2007 after it emerged he had lied on his refugee application about having served jail time in France.

His fire and brimstone sermons and rabble-rousing antics catapulted him into the public eye during his short tenure as imam at a Montreal mosque.

He branded homosexuality a disease and led protests over cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s illustrations poked fun at Islam and were published in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

He also caused anger when he campaigned for a bigger mosque to accommodate Montreal’s burgeoning Muslim population.

But after his deportation he complained that he had been physically and mentally tortured during the 13-hour flight repatriating him to Tunisia, a claim Canadian authorities deny.

He was being held as a material witness in the criminal case against Mr Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling.

Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling cartel $5,000 to take him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a ‘safe place anywhere in the U.S.’

According to the court documents, a Mexican guide led Jaziri and a Mexican immigrant over the border fence near Tecate.

They then trekked across the rugged terrain under cover of darkness to a spot popular for drivers who pick up immigrants for smuggling runs into San Diego.

He allegedly told officials he had flown from Africa to Europe, then to Central America and Chetumal, Mexico, on the Mexico-Belize border, where he took a bus to Tijuana.

Lise Garon, a professor of communications at Laval University in Quebec City, told the Los Angeles Times: ‘His nickname in Quebec was the controversial imam.

‘I think he was deported because people hated his ideas.’

His case drew support from the Muslim community as well as Amnesty International after he claimed he would be tortured if sent back to Tunisia.

Source: Daily Mail

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Horrific Proof Of The Fallibility Of Islam

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Taliban execute couple for adultery.

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Harry Potter Actress Beaten By Brother For Dating Non-Muslim

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

Manchester Crown Court heard Ashraf Azad launched a “prolonged and nasty” attack on Afshan Azad, who played Padma Patil in the hit films.

She was punched repeatedly and dragged by her hair after being overheard talking to her Hindu boyfriend.

Mr Azad, 28, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The court previously heard how Miss Azad, 22, was branded a “prostitute” and “slag” and was told: “Marry a Muslim or you die.”

The actress fled the family home in Longsight, south Manchester, through a bedroom window after the attack on 21 May 2010.

The actress, who now lives in London, had pleaded with the court not to jail her older brother.

Ashraf Azad pulled his sister’s hair and attempted to throttle her
But Judge Roger Thomas QC said there were no good or proper reasons to suspend his sentence of six months.

“This persistent attack was accompanied by serious and very hurtful abuse and threats,” he told the defendant.

“It must have been a miserable and frightening experience for your sister which, she suggested, lasted for about three hours or so.”

“The background to this offence lies in the concern that you, and perhaps other family members, had about Afshan’s relationship with a young man who was not of the Islamic faith.”

He added: “This is a sentence that is designed to punish you for what you did and also to send out a clear message to others that domestic violence involving circumstances such as have arisen here cannot be tolerated.”

The court heard that Miss Azad was in her bedroom, talking on her mobile phone and was overheard by her brother in the bathroom, who assumed she was speaking to her Hindu boyfriend.

Richard Vardon QC, prosecuting, said Azad confronted his sister who ended the call, hid the phone and sim card and then sat on her bed before the defendant barged in and began shouting at her.

“He then grabbed her hair and threw her across the room,” the prosecutor said.

“She began crying and asked him to stop. The defendant began punching her with clenched fists to her back and head area.”

“She struggled to breathe and was scared for her life”

The court was told that her brother’s wife, Sonia, who also lived at the house, came into the room and tried to push him away.

Mr Vardon said the actress was pushed on to her father’s bed, with her brother shouting: “Sort your daughter out! She’s a slag!”

Azad then grabbed his sister by the neck and began to throttle her, the court heard.

“She struggled to breathe and was scared for her life,” Mr Vardon added.

The victim’s mother and sister-in-law then entered the bedroom as the family discussed what to do with her, the court was told.

Mr Vardon said her father, Abul, 53, suggested sending her back to Bangladesh for an arranged marriage, while her mother called her a “prostitute”.

Miss Azad’s father sent her to bed, but she fled the house the next day.

Miss Azad’s character, a witch in the same year as Harry Potter at Hogwarts, first appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire.

She also features in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final film of the saga, which is being released in two parts.

Source: BBC

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Pakistanis Rally in Support of Blasphemy Law

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill on Friday as thousands of people took to the streets, and forced businesses to close, to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.

The law was introduced in the 1980s under the military dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as part of a policy of promoting Islam to unite this deeply fractious society. Many attempts to revise the law have since been thwarted by the strong opposition of religious forces, which continue to gather strength.

In fiery speeches across all major cities and towns, religious leaders warned the government on Friday against altering the law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of insulting Islam.

“The president and prime minister should take the nation into confidence and assure in unequivocal terms that there will be no change in the blasphemy law under any international pressure,” Sahibzada Fazal Kareem, a religious leader and member of Parliament, said at a rally in the southern port city of Karachi, where the police fired tear gas to stop protesters from marching toward Bilawal House, one of the residences of President Asif Ali Zardari.

The governing Pakistan Peoples Party, which is struggling to keep its government coalition intact, has been conciliatory on the issue.

Syed Sumsam Ali Bokhari, the minister for information, tried to placate religious forces by assuring them that the government did not intend to amend or repeal the law. “Neither the Pakistan Peoples Party nor the government has discussed the issue to bring any amendment in the blasphemy law,” Mr. Bokhari said Thursday at a news briefing.

But such assurances failed to calm the religious parties, who issued their call on Dec. 15 for a countrywide strike.

“I call it a natural result of religious extremism that is on the rise in Pakistani society,” said Mehdi Hasan, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights group, while commenting on the strike.

“The liberal and democratic forces in the country have retreated so much that it has created an ideological vacuum that is now being filled by the religious extremists,” Dr. Hasan said.

The human rights commission has documented scores of cases in which men have been harassed for being Christian or for being members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority group within Islam, and then accused of blasphemy. The mere fact of being a Christian or an Ahmadi in Pakistan makes a person vulnerable to prosecution, the commission says. Often the mere accusation of blasphemy has led to murders, lynchings and false arrests.

The latest push to revise the law came after the case of Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother of five who was sentenced to death by a municipal court, gained prominence in November. Ms. Bibi, a Christian, was accused of blasphemy after her fellow agricultural workers grew angry when she touched their water bowl, her supporters say.

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Muslim Students Being Taught To Cut Hands Off Of Thieves

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

Muslim children are being taught how to chop off thieves’ hands and that Jews are plotting to take over the world at a network of Islamic schools, it has been disclosed.

Up to 5,000 pupils attending weekend schools across Britain are being exposed to textbooks claiming that some Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and that some offences could be punished with stoning. One book for six year-olds warns that those who do not believe in Islam will be condemned to “hellfire” in death.

Another text for 15 year-olds teaches that thieves who break Sharia law should have their hands cut off for a first offence and their feet amputated for a subsequent crime. Teenagers are presented with diagrams showing where the cuts should be made.

Tonight’s Panorama on BBC One will claim that the books were discovered at a network of 40 private schools teaching the Saudi Arabian national curriculum. The programme claims to have uncovered evidence apparently linking the schools to the Saudi embassy. Officials at the embassy deny any link.

Panorama also found examples of private Muslim schools using extremist sentiments on their websites.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said last night that extremism, homophobia and anti-Semitism would not be tolerated in schools.

However, researchers claimed in a separate report that the education system was “not equipped” to deal with the threats posed by extremist organisations. The Policy Exchange think-tank said the Coalition’s new free schools, run by parents, teachers and charities, could be exploited by organisations seeking to indoctrinate young people. It also claimed that checks on groups running private schools were “piecemeal, partial and lack depth”. Mr Gove said Ofsted had been ordered to monitor part-time education providers closely.

The schools featured on Panorama were apparently organised under an umbrella group called Saudi Students Clubs and Schools in the UK and Ireland. They give Muslim children aged six to 18 a grounding the Islamic faith.

According to the BBC, a book for 15 year-olds teaches about Sharia law and its punishments. “For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence,” it says. Two diagrams show where cuts should be made.

For acts of sodomy, children are told that the penalty is death. A textbook says there are different views on whether this should be done by stoning, or burning with fire, or throwing over a cliff. Textbooks for 15 year-olds revive the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which teach that Jews want world domination.

In a statement, the Saudi embassy said: “Any tutoring activities that may have taken place among any other group of Muslims in the United Kingdom are absolutely individual to that group and not affiliated to or endorsed by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia.” The Saudi Ambassador told the BBC it was “dangerously deceptive and misleading” to discuss some of the texts outside of context.

Source: Telegraph UK

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Christian group denies converting Afghans

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

A Christian aid group on Sunday denied accusations by the Taliban that eight foreign aid workers shot dead in Afghanistan, including a British doctor and six Americans, had been attempting to convert Muslims.

The relief workers were killed along with two Afghan colleagues on Friday while travelling back from a two-week mission to deliver medical care to remote villages in the east of the country.

A spokesman for the Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings, saying the victims had been acting as US spies and carrying Bibles translated into Dari, one of the two main languages in Afghanistan. Police said they suspected the motive was robbery.

The International Assistance Mission, which organised the medical expedition, cast doubt on the Taliban’s statements, saying the group had only claimed responsibility for the killings after they had been reported in the media. The group, which says it has been registered as a Christian relief organisation in Afghanistan since 1966, says it does not seek converts.

“The accusation is completely baseless, they were not carrying any Bibles except maybe their personal Bibles,” Dirk Frans, IAM’s executive director, told Reuters. “As an organisation we are not involved in proselytising at all,” he said.

The Taliban has been shown to have made repeated false claims over the fate of missing foreigners in apparent attempts to gain publicity. The bodies of the workers, who included three women, were flown back to Kabul on Sunday. Among the dead was Dr Karen Woo, a British surgeon, and Dr Tom Little, the group’s leader, a US optometrist who had been working in Afghanistan for several decades. Five other US citizens, a German and two Afghans were also killed.

Gunmen waylaid the relief workers on Friday as they were driving back to Kabul after a two-week trek to provide mobile clinic services to a valley in Nuristan province.

The attack occurred as the team was passing through the adjacent Badakshan Province, which had been considered more secure than much of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where insurgent activity is fiercest.

Police said the attackers released an Afghan driver who recited verses from the Koran and begged for his life. Another Afghan was also reported to have survived.

The IAM said the attack would curtail its ability to help 250,000 Afghans it assists each year.

Dr Woo, who worked with a separate group called Bridge Afghanistan, had described her plans to run mother-and-child clinics during the trip to Nuristan in a blog post last month.

She said the mission would require hiking with pack horses through mountains rising to 5,000m in the Parun valley, an isolated area where some 50,000 people survive as shepherds and farmers.

“I will act as the team doctor and run the mother-and-child clinics once inside Nuristan. “The expedition team also includes an eye doctor and a dental surgeon,” she wrote.

Aqa Noor Kentuz, the police chief for Badakshan province, told Reuters that the “bullet-riddled” bodies of the victims – who included three women – were found early on Saturday.

“Before their travel we warned them not to tour near jungles in Nuristan but they said they were doctors and no one was going to hurt them,” Mr Kentuz said.

The attack was one of the worst on aid workers in Afghanistan.

In August 2008, four workers with the International Rescue Committee, a relief organisation, were shot dead in the eastern Logar province. The dead included three women.

Source: Financial Times

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Church will burn Qur’an on 9/11

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Here’s one Florida church’s idea of how to commemorate this year’s 9/11 anniversary:

On September 11, members of the Dove World Outreach Center – a Gainesville, Florida church – plan to burn copies of the Koran to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The protest is just the latest in a series of provocative actions from the self-described “New Testament Church,” which seems as interested in getting attention as it is in sharing the Word with the world. Unfortunately, their plan seems to have worked — and local investigators have begun probing the church’s tax-exempt status after reports that Dove World Outreach Center is essentially a scam.

The church, which was founded in 1986, has long been controversial in Gainesville. The Koran-burning protest is just the latest in a string of high-profile “protests on other issues, such as homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and abortion,” Religion News Service reports. But it seems clear that taking on Muslims is the one of the church’s central goals. The church’s leader, Dr Terry Jones – who before heading up the Dove World Outreach Center ran a sister church in Cologne, Germany – has published a book entitled “Islam is of the Devil” and posted a large sign outside his church that offers passing commuters the same message. Last year, members sent their kids to public schools wearing “Islam Is Of The Devil” t-shirts (the students were sent home, creating more headlines.)

That’s lovely stuff, eh? I’m surprised they didn’t just go straight to burning the people. I mean, there’s a long tradition in the church of both, really. Incredible.

I will read more about that incident in the schools last year, when I have the time, to see if maybe there’s a local hero in Gainesville who deserves wider credit for having stood up to this madness. Or maybe this church is just viewed as loony by most people.

I’ll say it again. This stuff is definitely on the rise, and it has to be correlated in some psychic way to the rise of extremism in this country, the Obama presidency and the idea some people have that there’s a Mooslum in the White House and kindred paranoid anxieites, and it is something for all of us Americans to be, shall we say, other than proud of.

Source: The Guardian

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Prisoners Convert To Islam For Jail Perks

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Inmates are converting to Islam in order to gain perks and the protection of powerful Muslim gangs, the Chief Inspector of Prisons warns today.

Dame Anne Owers says that some convicted criminals are taking up the religion in jail to receive benefits only available to practising Muslims.

The number of Muslim prisoners has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s — from 2,513 in 1994, or 5 per cent of the population, to 9,795 in 2008, or 11 per cent. Staff at top-security prisons and youth jails have raised concerns about the intimidation of non-Muslims and possible forced conversions.

Dame Anne’s report, Muslim Prisoners’ Experiences, published today, says that, although several high-profile terrorists have been jailed recently, fewer than 1 in 100 Muslim inmates have been convicted of terrorism.

She says that prison staff are suspicious about those practising or converting to the faith and warns that treating Muslim inmates as potential or actual extremists risks radicalising them. The report says: “Many Muslim prisoners stressed the positive and rehabilitative role that Islam played in their lives, and the calm that religious observance could induce in a stressed prison environment. This was in marked contrast to the suspicion that religious observance, and particularly conversion or reversion, tended to produce among staff.”

All prisons offer a halal menu, which some inmates see as better than the usual choices. Muslims are excused from work and education while attending Friday prayers. Some converts, who are known as “convenience Muslims”, admitted that they had changed faith because they got more time out of the cells to go to Friday prayers. One quoted in the report said: “Food good too, initially this is what converted me.”

In some of the most secure jails, the size of the Muslim population is well above average. Two years ago, Muslim inmates accounted for a third of prisoners in Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire, and a quarter of inmates in Long Lartin in Worcestershire.

The report says that inmates converted after learning about Islam from other inmates or their family, to obtain support and protection in a group with a powerful identity and for material advantages. One inmate quoted in the report said: “I’ve got loads of close brothers here. They share with you, we look out for each other.”

Muslim prisoners tended to report more negatively on their prison experience and were also more likely to fear for their own safety or complain of problems in their relations with staff. In high-security prisons, three-quarters of Muslims said they felt unsafe.

Dame Anne said that unless staff engaged effectively with them there was “a real risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that the prison experience will create or entrench alienation and disaffection, so that prisons release into the community young men who are more likely to offend, or even embrace extremism”.

Tom Robson, vice-chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, said that some impressionable prisoners were converting because they wanted status and protection. “What we have got at the moment is an upward trend,” he said. “It is worrying.”

Phil Wheatley, director-general of the National Offender Management Service, said: “Our clear policy is that all prisoners are treated with respect and decency, recognising the diverse needs of a complex prison population, and that the legitimate practice of faith in prison is supported.”

Dame Anne’s study was based on 85 jail inspection reports and in-depth interviews with 164 Muslim prisoners in eight jails. It follows reports of Muslim inmates seeking to assert their authority on the wings of prisons.

Source: timesonline.co.uk

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The Burqa’s War On Women

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

A bizarre form of political correctness is preventing us from an open discussion about what is, in fact, female subjugation.

It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.

Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.

But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy. At one level this is understandable, given the issue has become a confusing tussle between feminists and well-meaning liberals; nervous libertarians and right-wing ideologues; and the usual smattering of racists and dog-whistling shock-jocks.

Unfortunately for Muslim women, the burqa is not just a garment. It has become a weapon in a war of ideology: a war in which women are the battleground and their rights and freedoms are at stake.

Here’s the problem. Those who are critical of calls to ban the burqa perceive it to be an attack on personal freedoms. They view the burqa as an individual choice – which is arguable – and a religious requirement, which it is not. They look straight past the woman hidden from public view under heavy cloth, and instead applaud our multicultural tolerance. This is a mistake. The burqa has nothing to do with ethnic diversity and everything to do with a war against women. Those who wear it, and those who insist it be worn, subscribe to an ideology in which women are inferior sexual temptresses, whose female form is a problem and must be covered. This is based on the contradictory proposition that men are both superior and yet unable to control their sexual urges if they see women in their natural human state. If this wasn’t deadly serious, it would be funny.

Award-winning Muslim journalist Mona Eltahawy says she is appalled to hear Europeans defend the burqa and niqab. “A bizarre political correctness has tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women’s rights,” she says. Yet, to argue directly with Islamic fundamentalists about gender equality is fruitless. According to Eltahawy, “the ideology that promotes the niqab and burqa does not believe in the concept of women’s rights to begin with”.

Let’s be clear. This is not about the hijab – or headscarf. Like any hat or cap, the hijab is a matter of individual right. Whether worn for reasons of devotion, modesty, conformity or fashion, it is personal and the state has no business banning it. The burqa is an entirely different issue.

The burqa and the niqab shroud the full body, covering every part of a woman except her feet. The niqab includes a slit for the eyes, whereas the burqa has mesh netting. Malalai Joya, an Afghan MP and a devout Muslim, hates wearing it. “It’s not only oppressive,” she says, “but it’s more difficult than you might think. You have no peripheral vision. And it’s hot and suffocating under there.”

When visiting Australia recently, Joya didn’t pack her burqa. She is one of the many millions of Muslim women around the world who choose not to wear it – when they don’t have to. Numerous Islamic scholars, men and women, argue that there is not a single reference in the Koran that mandates women must cover their face and bodies and hide themselves from public view. The Koran does call for modesty, which some interpret as an obligation to wear the headscarf. But even that is widely questioned by progressive Muslims scholars such as Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. Furious at Islamic extremists for their “gender apartheid”, Fatah insists that even the hijab is being used by fundamentalists as a “political tool” who have turned it into “the central pillar of Islam”.

Outside Australia, there are plenty of Muslim women who despise the burqa and niqab as much as I do, and are prepared to say so. British journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a Shiite Muslim who pulls no punches. “I abhor the burqa,” she wrote in The Independent, saying that she was “offended” by the presumption that women who wear it “are more pious and true” than her.

There is no doubt that women who don this ostentatious costume in the West are proud of their piety. One such woman told me, “the niqab is submission and servitude to my Almighty Creator” and that I had no right to question her choice to wear it. Well, I do. What God demands men roam free while women wear a sackcloth that restricts their movement and dehumanises them? What God wants to punish women in this way? What God hates women so much that he restricts her right to be man’s equal?

The answer is obvious. No God. This is the work of men – who claim a direct link to the divine – and wish to keep women subordinate and under their control. It’s that simple.

Source: The Age

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Pakistan Blocks Facebook Over Mohammed Caricature Contest

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

A Pakistani court Wednesday ordered authorities to block Facebook temporarily over a competition encouraging users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on the social networking site.

The depiction of any prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam as blasphemous and Muslims across the world staged angry protests over the publication of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in European newspapers in 2006.

Controversy erupted in the conservative Muslim country last month when a Facebook user set up a page called “Draw Mohammed Day”, inviting people to send in their caricatures of the Muslim prophet on May 20.

The move angered thousands of young people and Muslim faithful in Pakistan, unleashing an online campaign and isolated protests that grabbed the government’s attention and the controversial page was blocked on Tuesday.

But a group of Islamic lawyers went a step further Wednesday and petitioned the court to order a blanket ban on Facebook in Pakistan.

Justice Ejaz Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court directed the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to block Facebook until May 31, when the court will open a detailed hearing into the case.

“We moved the petition in the wake of widespread resentment in the Muslim community against the Facebook contest,” lawyer Rai Bashir told AFP.

The petition also called on the government to lodge a strong protest with the owners of Facebook, he added.

PTA said it would implement the ban once the order has been issued by the ministry of information technology and confirmed it had already blocked access to the offending page.

“We will implement the order as soon as we get the instructions,” Khurram Mehran told AFP.

“We have already blocked the URL link and issued instruction to Internet service providers yesterday,” he said.

Nayatel, a leading Internet service provider, notified clients that it had blocked access to Facebook in compliance with the court order.

“Facebook has been holding a competition to draw caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad and has not removed the objectionable hate materials despite thousands of emails from Pakistani Facebook community,” it said in a statement.

“This access would remain blocked till 31 May 2010 or further orders by the Lahore High Court,” it added.

Facebook, which is based in the United States, was not immediately reachable for comment.

About 20 people demonstrated outside court in the eastern city of Lahore, carrying banners condemning Facebook and praising Mohammed.

Hardline Islamic party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, an ally of the main ruling Pakistan People’s Party, welcomed the court order and called for a complete ban on all Western websites “promoting liberal culture and obscenity”.

“The West, Europe and America are doing such things deliberately to hurt Muslims and to create divides between Islam and other religions,” said a senior party member Mohammad Riaz Durrani.

“They are doing this because the want to use such sentiments to continue their war on terror justifying extremism within Islam,” he told AFP.

But fans of Facebook, which is wildly popular among the urban, educated and generally moderate elite in Pakistan, were dismayed by the court order.

“What if they will ban it permanent? I will move out somewhere else,” one user wrote on his Facebook status update.

Another user said the court order was “crazy”.

“This is like spreading extremism as if nobody knew about this page. Now everyone knows,” she told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“People are sensible and if you don?t like that page you don?t go on that page,” she said, calling for moderation.

Pakistan briefly banned YouTube in February 2008 in a similar protest against “blasphemous” cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on the popular website.

YouTube said an Internet service provider complying with Pakistan’s ban routed many worldwide users to nowhere for a couple of hours, which sparked a worldwide outage.

Source: RawStory.com

**UPDATE – Pakistan blocks YouTube access over Muhammad depictions

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