Pakistani religious body faces backlash over anti-VPN decree

Islamabad: Pakistan’s leading constitutional religious body came under severe criticism after it issued an edict terming the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to access blocked content on the internet as 'un-Islamic'.  The unprecedented pro­clamation by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), which advises parliament on aligning legislation with Islamic teachings, enraged digital rights activists as well as some religious scholars.

According to the Dawn newspaper, the CII chief Raghib Naeemi said that using VPNs to access “imm­oral or illegal content” was against Sharia. In a social media statement on Saturday, Maulana Tariq Jameel, a prominent religious scholar, said if watching adult content or blasphemous material was an issue then mobile phones should be declared un-Islamic before labelling VPNs as such.

Senator Allama Nasir Abbas, the chief of the Shia organisation Majlis Wahdat Muslimeen (MWM), said the country was being ruled by an “incompetent and corrupt elite” who were not even the true representatives of the people.

“They make laws in such a way and are using decrees … as per their whims,” Senator Abbas added.

Wahaj Siraj, the CEO of telecom company Nayatel, said technology has always been neutral and only its use or misuse made it ‘Halal or Haram’.

The issue of VPNs came to light after the Interior Ministry asked the Pakistan Telecom Authority, the electronic media watchdog, to take action against their illegal use as they were being used for terrorism.

Nighat Dad, the executive director of the Digital Rights Foundation, said the action to block VPNs was “contradictory” to the rights of privacy granted in the Constitution.

“This move was only to target certain social media users,” she claimed.

Senator Palwasha Khan has called a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on IT and Telecom, which she heads, on November 18. The meeting will discuss restrictions on what the telecom regulator called “illegal” use of VPNs in Pakistan.

Khan questioned if the Pakistan Teleco­mmunication Auth­ority (PTA) will be monitoring the content watched by users.

A CII member told Dawn that the statement was Naeemi’s “personal views” and not the council’s decision. He said watching immoral content by using technology cannot be categorised as a religious issue.