YouTube Folds Under Islamic Pressure, Removes Blasphemous Videos

YouTube has removed videos from its site that might be offensive to Muslims following the site being banned in Pakistan. The issue centered around a trailer for a movie coming out soon from a Dutch filmmaker that shows Islam in a less that favorable light.

Pakistan banned the site and YouTube blinked, literally. Pakistan denies it, but the actions they took amounts to cyberterrorism:

n other words, the Pakistani government essentially committed an act of cyberterrorism. Islamabad denies it, claiming its crashing of YouTube was “not intentional.”

However, “we have determined the source of these events was a network in Pakistan,” YouTube said in a statement. “We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again.”

Meantime, YouTube is giving in to its blackmailers in Pakistan by removing “highly profane and sacrilegious footage” that was offensive to Islam, including cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Pakistan’s religious police, in turn, issued instructions to all local ISPs to unblock YouTube, “as the specific content has been removed by the Web site.”

Dutch newspaper editors are putting their lives on the line by reprinting the cartoons that lead to riots, but YouTube doesn’t have the sack to host a video that is critical of the Religion of Peace™.

Meanwhile, this trailer remains:

We recall how Islamabad reacted with equal fulmination after the pope, in a 2006 speech, linked Islam to violence. “Anyone who describes Islam as intolerant encourages violence,” Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Tasnim Aslam said.

So don’t call us intolerant or we’ll kill you. Or attack your infidel video-sharing Web sites.

Imagine the Vatican blocking YouTube trailers for “The Da Vinci Code.” It was offensive, but there were no attempts at censorship. Things are only threatening when they are true.

Yet the pope apologized for stating the obvious about the source of terror in the world, joining all those intrepid newspapers that self-censored during the cartoon jihad. And now YouTube executives have joined them both.

It’s time for the West to stop letting the Muslim world lecture it about what is moral. We must stand up and consistently send a message to Islamofascists that in our societies we allow “highly provocative” and even “blasphemous” dialogue. It’s called free speech, which leads to debate, which leads to enlightenment.

Hat Tip: Newsbusters