From Tablet Magazine, a new online mag about Jewish Issues, which continues to surprise in every way ...So basically what I get is - Jews like to argue (maybe the Deobandi pushtuns and other gintsu wielding freaks have been at one of my family seders), and Wahabbis not only can't do that, they will kill you if you might be effective ....just in case? And in case you might LIKE to argue, it is a plot against god.The most highly anticipated recent work of fiction about Mark Zuckerberg is not the new biopic The Social Network but rather a criminal investigation launched this summer by Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque, Pakistan's deputy attorney general. Zuckerberg, Sidiqque argued, is guilty of violating Section 295-C of Pakistan's penal code, which asserts that "whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation ... defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) shall be punished with death." Zuckerberg's website, Facebook, has more than 500 million active users, one of whom had decided to encourage her peers to draw and post pictures of the prophet. Pakistan sought to prosecute not the individual offender but several of Facebook's executives, including Zuckerberg and his co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
After a Pakistani court barred access to Facebook and 450 other sites suspected of anti-Muslim agitation, many cheered the decision as an effective counter-strike against nefarious Jewish designs. One Pakistani blogger captured the zeitgeist well when he claimed that the initiative to draw Muhammad was "a secret conspiracy of the Jewish lobbies to manipulate the world phenomena of terrorism," and others took pleasure inpointing out the abundance of Jewish-sounding last names on the executive suites of companies like Google, Oracle, Wikipedia, and eBay. Put bluntly, it seems that many in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world believe the Internet to be a global Jewish conspiracy.
And here's the beautiful thing: In some ways, they are right.
READ IT ALL.....
Which brings us back to Pakistan. Under the influence of Wahabism, the new zealots find in Web 2.0 a terrifying threat to an intolerant and hierarchical stream of Islam that spends as much energy crushing intrafaith competition as it does opposing foreign influence. Unlike China, which objects to social media platforms and search engines only when they are used to disseminate anti-government messages (and which has developed home-grown alternative sites and services), men like Pakistan's Sidiqque have neatly internalized Marshall McLuhan's famous quip that the medium is the message. They know that the most radical thing about Brin, Zuckerberg, and the technologies they created is that they encourage constant commentary, ongoing debate, endless involvement. It's a way of thinking that is very bad for oppressive corporations, zealous theocracies, and anyone else wishing to exert complete control over information. But it is very good for the Jews
