Our premier investigation agency, FIA has started, albeit belatedly, the much desired operation cleanup. The ‘social media’ in Pakistan deserved it. There is nothing social about it, for its as wrong, sensational, and frequently at fault, as the other media, print or electronic.
The only media worthy of the title ‘social’ are PTV and Radio Pakistan: decent, harmless, homoeopathic in approach to news, i.e., don’t tell what people don’t need to know and don’t telecast what’s not good for the society or government.
Let’s first thank FIA for opting to cleanse the so-called ‘social media’ of undesired elements, instead of banning it, which an honourable judge had so much desired. As its easier banned than bettered, we should not only be happy but also support FIA in their prudent choice of cleansing over banning.
Social media is like incidental filth depot next to a mosque. And, at least mosque and filth depots must be separated if we can’t separate mosque and the State. I believe FIA’s operation will do just that and yield pleasant social consequences, as well as lots of sawaab in the hereafter.
This piece is a small attempt to help FIA in doing its job cheaply and neatly.
The social media has done something very cheap; it made it so cheap to be anti-state. In yesteryears, it would take people a lifetime to know things, develop critical perspectives and challenge the state. Now any Tom, Dick and Harry (less of Toms & Harrys, more of the others) can become anti-state overnight. All they need is a cheap phone, cheap internet package and a few, cheap tweets or FB posts where they spit at Pakistan’s shining moons and stars who are as dear to the government as innocent babies to parents. After all, our institutions are no less innocent and vulnerable than toddlers, and if government & society do not protect them from malicious social media activists, who will?
I know many friends are not happy with FIA. But I tell you, they are doing a right thing. Since anybody who attempts to do the right thing anywhere in the world is jeered at by left-leaning folks, it’s the duty of people with their hearts and minds at the right place to help FIA do its job rightly.
FIA made a list of 200 bad-guys but went after only 10%. It seems the list was either wrong or made in China. Now we can help FIA in making the right list.
Social media needs to be cleansed of the following four types who indulge in anti-state, immoral, and anti-religion activities.
One, those who forward porn jokes soon after, or before, religious messages. They must be taken in correctional custody and made to watch PTV transmissions of the 1980s for 90 days so that they get their sequence right. They don’t know, how important a secular pause is between religious calls to action and sensual entertainment.
Two, those who commit ‘forward-as-received’ with a religious routine, must be asked to prove they offered their five prayers, and thus daily balanced their sins of spamming with religious duty.
Three, those who type tweets or FB posts in Urdu and expect the Americans, Jews and Indians to die of insults. They need training in how to type Urdu in Roman letters, and correctly, and translate them too.
The last on the list are that 10 % who FIA do not need to worry about or directly deal with. They can be dealt with by true Pakistanis, who’ll troll them back to their couches. The true Pakistanis can be enrolled to stream-roll the self-ascribed activists like Mullah mobilises mobs to protect faith from blasphemers.
FIA can also benefit from 18th Amendment to expand provincially, and rename itself as PIA (Provincial Investigation Agency), which will help it clean up incognito, and much more effectively. Because no one will feel threatened by a ‘PIA’, and by the time they know it was FIA, the operation would be done.
