Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain "blasphemous" material, officials said today.
The move comes a day after the Pakistan government blocked Facebook because of a page on the social networking site that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Mohammed.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said in a statement the government took action after it failed to convince the two websites to remove "derogatory material".
Access to the online encyclopaedia site Wikipedia and the photo-sharing site Flickr was also restricted.
The Facebook page at the centre of the dispute - "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" - encourages users to post images of the prophet on May 20th to protest threats made by a radical Muslim group against the creators of South Park for depicting Muhammed in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year.
The page has generated criticism in Pakistan and elsewhere because Islam prohibits any images of the prophet. The government took action after a group of Islamic lawyers won a court order yesterday requiring officials to block Facebook until May 31st.
In the southern city of Karachi, about 2,000 female students rallied demanding that Facebook be banned for tolerating the page. Several dozen male students held a rally nearby, with some holding signs urging Islamic holy war against those who blaspheme the prophet.
"We are not trying to slander the average Muslim," said the information section of the Facebook page. "We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammad depictions that we're not afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us into silence."
A series of cartoons of the prophet published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 sparked violent protests by Muslims around the world, including Pakistan, and death threats against the cartoonists.
Pakistan's minister of religious affairs, Hamid Saeed Kazmi, said the country's ban was only a temporary solution and suggested the government organise a conference of Muslim countries to figure out ways to prevent the publication of images of the prophet, which have caused backlashes among Muslim populations.
Agencies