Pakistan lifted the Facebook ban on Monday after Facebook officials apologized for offensive content and blocked access to it — at least for those who try to access the offending content from Pakistan.
Two weeks ago, a Pakistani court had ordered the authorities to block Facebook because of a contest that called for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
“The government has assured the court on behalf of the website that the blasphemous material would not be seen in Pakistan,” lawyer Azhar Siddique told Reuters. Siddique is a representative of the Islamic Lawyers Forum, a group whose petition called for the Facebook ban.
It seems that Facebook didn’t completely remove the groups deemed offensive to Muslims, instead blocking access to them from Pakistan and, possibly, other Islamic countries. The same Facebook search we conducted when the ban was first imposed still yields two groups which feature several caricatures of the Islamic Prophet.
Recently, Bangladesh also blocked Facebook over satirical images deemed offensive to Muslims.
