Islamabad: A Pakistani lawyer, who has
twice moved the Lahore High Court to ban Facebook in the
nation, has an account on the popular social networking site
with 1,575 friends and spends an average of 14 hours a day on
it, a media report said Monday.
Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique, on whose petition
access to the website was banned in the country for two weeks
last year, told The Express Tribune that he stayed logged into
Facebook from 8am to 10pm every day.
Asked whether he considered it hypocritical to spend
so much time on Facebook when he was trying to get it banned,
Siddique said he checked the site "to make it mend its ways".
He said much of his time was spent looking at messages
from people informing him of any blasphemous material on the
site.
However, the report said he also uses the website to
share how his cases are going with his Facebook friends,
including his petitions to ban the website.
Siddique has posted 323 pictures on his profile,
including of family, friends and news clippings of his cases
published in the local press, the daily said.
Siddique first moved the LHC against the website last
year because of a Facebook page which carried blasphemous
caricatures. Acting on his plea, the Pakistan
Telecommunication Authority had banned Facebook from March 19
to March 31.
Siddique filed another petition against Facebook
earlier this month again seeking a ban on the website for
hosting another page which allegedly contained objectionable
materials.
He denied moving the petitions against Facebook to
gain publicity, saying he had many other cases in the courts
that were covered in the press.
Besides, he has launched `Millatfacebook`, a
networking site for Muslims and a rival to Facebook.
He said the aim of launching Millatfacebook was to
counter Facebook and show the Western world that Muslims were
not against modern technology, just against the abuse of it.
The site has 437,596 registered members, the report said.
PTI
