Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) served legal notices to Internet giants Google and Wikipedia for distributing ‘sacrilegious’ content through their platforms, a PTA press release said on Friday.
Google is the primary search engine in the 220 million strong, Muslim-majority country and has been marked by Google Asia Pacific as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with an online population that grew 68 percent in three years.
The telecom authority said it has been receiving complaints regarding “misleading search results associated with ‘Present Khalifa of Islam,’” and that an unauthentic version of the Holy Qur’an was uploaded by the Ahmadiyah Community on Google Play Store.
Pakistan’s constitution forbids the Ahmadiyah community from calling themselves Muslims or using Islamic symbols in their religious practices.
Earlier this year, Pakistan’s cabinet declined to include the sect in a new minority commission. The sect has up to 20 million followers worldwide with about half a million considered to be in Pakistan.
“Being a matter of a very serious nature, the PTA has approached Google Inc. with directions to immediately remove the unlawful content,” the press release further said, and warned of legal action if the platforms did not comply.
The authority added that complaints were also received regarding blasphemous caricatures of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and dissemination of “misleading, wrong, deceptive and deceitful information” through articles published on Wikipedia portraying the current leader of the Ahmadiyah community as a Muslim.
“After extensive communication on the matter, Wikipedia has been finally served with the notice to remove the sacrilegious content to avoid any legal action,” the statement said.
In October this year, Pakistan banned video-sharing platform TikTok over objectionable content, and has passed new Internet laws that give the government more control on how Pakistanis use the Internet and social media.
