Tag: ISLAM

RIM has agreed to block porn sites on all BlackBerry devices within Indonesia, as part of the government's ongoing efforts to rid its country of online smut. In a statement released today, RIM confirmed that it's in negotiations with local service providers to find a "prompt, compliant filtering solution" before the government-imposed deadline of January 21st. If the company does not comply ...

The Palestinian Authority has arrested a 26-year-old West Bank blogger for calling himself "God" on Facebook. The suspect, Walid Husayin, works as a barber in the conservative town of Qalqilya, where the locals describe him as a devout family man. When he surfs the Web, though, Husayin apparently takes on an entirely different persona. As the AP reports, Husayin is now facing a sentence of ...

On Saturday, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia unexpectedly blocked access to Facebook, amid concerns that the social networking site had been posing a threat to the country's conservative moral code. When news of the ban first broke, it appeared that Saudi Arabia was following in the footsteps of Bangladesh and Pakistan, both of which had blocked Facebook earlier this year in the wake of the 'Everybody ...

On Wednesday, British writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown appeared on a morning television show to discuss human rights in China. For whatever reason, the liberal columnist's words raised the ire of a local politician named Gareth Compton, who promptly called for her death on Twitter. Now, he's been arrested. Shortly after the broadcast, Compton tweeted: "Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ...

Yesterday, YouTube suddenly purged its site of hundreds of videos featuring Anwar al-Awlaki, a high-profile Islamic cleric who used the video-sharing platform to issue calls for jihadist violence against the U.S. The American-born al-Awlaki is currently based in Yemen, and has been tied to Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, Christmas Day bomber Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab and Faisal Shazad (the man ...

The official website of the Dove World Outreach Center unexpectedly shut down today, just two days before the Florida church's highly publicized Koran-burning event. Dan Goodgame, a spokesman for Web-hosting firm Rackspace, tells the AFP that the church's page was pulled because it "violated the Offensive Content section of [Rackspace's] Acceptable Use policy." Rackspace's policy expressly bans ...

Maybe you heard the (literally) big news yesterday that Mecca, the Islamic holy city in Saudi Arabia, has built a clock that will rival Greenwich's classically Euro-imperialist time standard. Putting aside our nation's ad nauseum demagoguery against the 1.57-billion-strong, worldwide faith of Islam, you have to admit that the new clock is quite an awesome achievement. Islam as a religion is a ...

Joining the ranks of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and New York gubernatorial candidates Rick Lazio and (the unlikely) Carl Paladino, former NYC Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik has also come out in opposition of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. That's great news for the anti-mosque organizers, but we must remind ourselves that Kerik is also a convicted felon currently serving time in Cumberland, ...

Share A few days ago, Republican prizefighter Sarah Palin posted a Facebook note titled 'An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground.' In the statement, Palin railed against a proposal to build a new mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, comparing the proposed construction to a "stab in the heart" for many Americans. [Ed. Note: As New Yorkers who pass this daily, we'd like ...

What do you call a porn-free Internet? Here, we'd say "our worst nightmare," (bad-um), but for Indonesian web surfers, they might soon have to call it "reality." That's because the world's most populous country of Muslim majority is planning on invoking an anti-pornography law to restrict any online fun smut that might soil its citizens' computers. Gatot Dewa Broto, a spokesman for Indonesia's ...

Here is this week's Reason That Twitter Should Be Banned. In yet another high-profile overshare, Octavia Nasr, the Lebanese-born Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs for CNN, was fired Tuesday for posting a single tweet about the passing of one of Hezbollah's most influential clerics. She wrote: "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a ...

Dubai, the Las-Vegas-of-the-Middle-East-turned-economic-wasteland, is rejecting full-body scanners at its airports because they "contradict Islam," according to Brigadier Pilot Ahmad Mohammad Bin Thani, who is the head of airport security for Dubai police. Concerned about the "privacy of individuals and their personal freedom," Bin Thani remarked to the Associated Free Press that Dubai will use ...

The Facebook-fueled, 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' controversy may have subsided, but the Pakistani government is still doing its best to make sure it never flares up again. According to Reuters, Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology has placed seven major websites under stronger governmental surveillance in an attempt to guarantee that none of the sites contain "blasphemous material." ...

If you happen to be a fan of the Taliban, you may now have another thing to worry about besides your psychological well-being: hackers. As Wired reports, a Taliban-endorsed, online jihadi forum has apparently come under cyber-siege from people who, shock of shocks, disagree with what the radical Islamic organization espouses. Abu al-Aina'a al-Khorasani, the administrator of the belligerent forum ...

Following Pakistan's lead, authorities in Bangladesh recently decided to block access to Facebook, on the grounds that the social networking site contains "objectionable" content about both the Prophet Mohammad and the country's own political officials. According to CNET, chief telecommunications regulator Zia Ahmed has requested that all Internet providers block the site, until a page publicizing ...