Pakistani religious body declares using VPN is against Islamic law

Its not about religion, its politics. A few years ago the Pakistani military overthrew a very popular prime minister who publicly said that it was the military behind his removal. Then slowly and gradually there was more and more evidence behind military involvement which as a result, made the public anti-military. They have been kidnapping and torturing anyone critical of them.

But the more they oppress, the more people become anti-military. It got to the point that in february the government blocked access to twitter because of anti-military sentiment, so people started using VPNs. Now this "religious body" which is government appointed claims to block VPN because "people are watching immoral things via VPN". But in reality, it is to stop people organizing protests.

Also a governmental body can not decide what is islamic or not, thats not how islamic law works. It has to come from islamic scholars and there needs to be consus on it.

I don't think any major islamic scholar who lives inside pakistan has signed or approved this message even though they want to stop porn they know its not about stopping porn, its about making it difficult to criticize the military.

Its not about religion, its politics.

It's about religion. In a theocracy religion is politics, and law, and culture too.

Religion isn't something that empowers people to do more or live more freely. Religious dogma is nothing more than a set of arbitrary laws and norms, written and decided by man, but given the weight and authority of god(s)--the fear of eternal damnation in the afterlife being the only way that people knew to keep others in line in a world devoid of secular laws.

How did we convince women that they were lesser beings throughout human history? Why do we consider some forms of consensual adult sexuality to be morally wrong? Why do we believe that human beings are destined and entitled to live on this planet forever no matter how poorly we treat it?

The answer is religion. Religion is mass delusion, used mainly as a tool of oppression. Socrates was sentenced to death by a jury of Athenians for thought crimes against Athena, showing that religion, democracy and justice simply do not mix. Thousands of years ago (or more) gods and religious law were the inventions that ushered humanity into the post-truth world that we live in today.
- Look we can criticize religion for its issues all we want but in this specific case, they are using religion as a tool to get what they want. If it weren't for religion, they would use something else.
  
  "Terrorists are using VPNs to evade law enforcement"
  
  Or maybe something racism related
  
  Fascist/authoritarian governments always use something to control the public.
  
  they are using religion as a tool to get what they want.
  
  This is what religion has always been used as. Religious law existed before civil law, because it's easy to get people to do what they're told if they believe that their godlike creator will punish them eternally for breaking the rules.
  
  Again, how did people convince the world that gay sex is not only taboo but something to be entirely shunned and punished?
  
  You tell them that it's a sin before the eyes of "God", who in his anger will turn you and anyone who even looks in your direction into a "pillar of salt" or whatever. Remember the existence of "sodomy" (read: homosexuality) in Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't just something bad, it was an mortal sin that supposedly wiped entire towns off the map, as they want you to believe that what your neighbor does in their bedroom isn't just their own business but also an existential threat to your entire society. In the literal interpretation of all 3 Abrahamic Religions, it's not enough to avoid homosexuality yourself, it has to be eliminated from society entirely lest we all end up like Sodom and Gomorrah...
  
  And for what? Obviously we all know that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is pure bullshit, even many religious people today hopefully don't take it literally...
  
  But the simple truth is that someone, thousands of years ago, felt disgusted by homosexuality and created a big lie about it in order to convince people that gayness anywhere in society would eventually bring about God's wrath. And that utter fucking bullshit has lead to thousands of years of fear, discrimination, violence and hate, lasting even today in various degrees throughout the world. Humanity chose to go down this path when we chose to believe in religious lies.
  
  Because THAT is exactly what religions does--that is what religion was designed to do: to keep people in line, to oppress undesirable people and qualities out of society, to avoid coming face to face with the unknown, and to impose the will of the few on the populace at large. Religion tells people what to eat, what to fuck, when and how they can listen to music, how to live and how to die. Outside of a few exceptions, it's mostly a toxic ideology that empowers nobody and oppresses billions of people all over the world, and to top it all off, it's just a bunch of fake, make-believe bullshit.
- Call it "stories that people are taking way too seriously". I'm sure that you can think of other stories that people take way too seriously too, that have nothing to do with religion.
  
  I think that we might be seeing the power of propaganda there. Consider that the science of propaganda is very old. Thousands of years old. There's population-control psychology there. It's got hooks.
  
  (On the flipside, imposing a set of rules for moral behavior is a good thing. People can be animals. And if you need to cite an old story about gods and wizards to give those rules some oomph then so be it.)
No, it's definitely religion. Always has been.
- Do you understand that they are using religion as an excuse? If that wasn't an option, they would just use something else.
  
  That's exactly what organized religions are designed to do in action, crowd control

Thing is privacy is protected in Islam, this has nothing to do with religion.

It serves a need. Get rid of the need and you'll get rid of the religious bullshit. But if you get rid of the religious bullshit without getting rid of the need, some other kind of bullshit will crop up.

Nobody needs religion.
- Religion isn't the need. Social interaction and the feeling of belonging and belief are the needs. Religion can and does fill that for many.
  
  And before you attack me, I'm atheist.
  
  But other things can and do too, so religion isn't necessary. That's the point.
  
  Nobody said it was. Just that it does meet some needs.
  
  Until you somehow convince those who have those needs that religion isn't the correct way to meet those needs, you're not going to get anywhere screaming that religion isn't necessary. Those people firmly believe it is as it meets those needs for them and don't have something else to do so.
  
  Nobody said it was.
  
  Well that's just not true, but ignoring that...
  
  I didn't scream anything, neither did the OP that started this. They stated it calmly and plainly. Obviously religion serves a function in society, but so does slavery. I'm not trying to convince anyone to give up their long-held beliefs, I'm simply defending my interpretation of reality as objectively as I can. Just like coffee, alcohol, and black market sex rings, no one needs religion. The only reason I could think of that you would want to argue against that position is if you believed it wasn't true. But it is. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
  
  Well that’s just not true, but ignoring that…
  
  No. Let's not ignore that. If you're going to call someone a liar, own up to it. The comment that spawned this chain says verbatim
  
  It serves a need.
  
  It being "religion" and "a need" would imply another, different "need". Otherwise it would have been simpler and more direct to say something like "Religion is a need".
  
  I didn’t scream anything
  
  Coming back and repeating the same shit that I just addressed from the previous comment ... Constant repetition is literally someone shoving fingers in their ears and scream "LALALALALALA". You even did it again in this post by stating "no one needs religion" when I already addressed that and even agreed with that sentiment, but wanted to specifically caveat why religion would count for "It serves a need".
  
  Nobody said that anyone "needs" religion. Quite the contrary. The statement is "religion fills needs" to put it another way. I even clarified and made it clear that if you can find something else that fills the needs for those people that you could likely replace religion. But for some reason you keep trucking forward with your comments acting like someone said something they didn't.
  
  The only reason I could think of that you would want to argue against that position is if you believed it wasn’t true.
  
  What the fuck logic is this? So I must believe that Religion is a need then? I'm atheist. I stated that outright from the beginning in my first post on this thread. Fuck "God", "Yahweh", "Mohammed", or any other god that you or anyone else believes in, they're all fake. I clearly don't believe that religion is a "need".
  
  "It serves a need"
  
  I clearly don't believe that religion is a "need"
  
  Now I don't trust your definition of "need" or of "clearly". What other words do you define in diametric opposition to their intended meaning?
  
  People need oxygen, breathing serves that need. People need various organic compounds for energy, eating serves that need. People want to not be afraid of the void, religion serves that want. No one needs religion and it doesn't "serve" a need, just a desire..🤷‍♂️ I'm sorry me simply restating my point triggers you so badly, just keep in mind that you're not going to get anywhere screaming that religion serves needs.
  
  Serves a need. As in meets some other need. Which I've already addressed. Further I even addressed what SPECIFIC needs that it could possible be serving.
  
  Religion isn’t the need. Social interaction and the feeling of belonging and belief are the needs. Religion can and does fill that for many.
  
  Social interaction: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/we-are-hard-wired-to-be-social-248746
  Feeling of belonging: https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/is-having-a-sense-of-belonging-important
  
  I'm done with you. You're either purposefully obtuse, or a troll. It's people like you who ruin actual discussion with people who could actually be educated and turned away from the fictitious man in the sky. You make up shit to address that nobody said. You ignore EVERYTHING other people post just to post your own drivel. It's fucking useless and pointless. 3 seconds of googling could have saved yourself from looking like a fool.
  
  Edit: you even go out of your way to somehow "break" the definition of clearly when in the previous fucking sentence I literally commit what amounts to the ultimate sin in nearly every abrahamic religion all while implying I somehow care about those religions. You're special, and not in the good way.
- Given its vast popularity, I expect that some would argue otherwise.
  
  Painting baby toys with lead was pretty popular for awhile, so was filling your house with asbestos. Don't confuse popularity with necessity, you might get cancer.
  
  The lead paint and the asbestos both served a need. For colored toys and insulation, specifically. And then we found a better way to serve that need. It isn't a dumb need.
  
  Don't assume that everybody who sees things differently is an idiot.
  
  I didn't call anyone an idiot, I just made the point that something being popular in society doesn't even make it good for society, much less necessary. Just look at fentanyl, or network primetime television.

You know how some people make the claim that atheism is a religion? This is why. People who think that anyone who believes something different from them is a moron and/or in need of conversion. I don't like it when religions behave like this, and I don't like it when nonreligions behave like this, either.

Respectfully, you think I'm denigrating Islam because it's different from what I believe?

No.

I'm simply pointing out what, to anyone who wasn't raised in it, is obvious stupidity.
- Muslim here, this “ruling” is nonsense and is just one dumb political opinion that the rest of the Muslim world is mocking. This isn’t Islam.
- Sorry if I misunderstood. I interpreted your comment as saying that all religion was moronic bullshit, which would be in line with what I said.
  
  If you meant that this particular religious behavior is moronic bullshit, I completely agree. I just don't hold the view that every religious person is a moron because they believe in a religion.
  
  All religions are moronic bullshit. I'll say it.
  
  Religion is just codified superstition. Aka moronic bullshit
  
  All religions are moronic bullshit. People are free to believe what they like, no one has a need for rules that tell them how to believe.
  
  Not all religion is bullshit, but there is a lot of crossover between religious teachings and bullshit. That's why they invented the word 'faith', because they are self-aware of the incredulousness of it all.
  
  Like the utter bullshit in this article, as if 7th Century teachings have anything to say about VPN's.
Using allegory as a moral proxy is fine. And even a really great way of making complex or dry topics more approachable.

What is not ok is when you take allegory as literal, such that you actually believe that there is a sky wizard who will punish you for showing your hair in public. What is incredibly fucked up is when you then project that literal belief to a prescriptive action framework which commands you to murder heretics.
- I love this comment.
  
  My related anecdote is that I studied Aikido for many years, and there's a lot of woo-woo in it. Energy, and Ki and whatnot. At one point (I was taking physics at the time) I realized that Aikido of all about directing momentum and force, and force as levers on body parts, and that you could probably calculate all of the various ideal angles for maximum conservation of momentum, and angles for balance points... and I realized that all of the woo-woo was a simplification of all of this that allows people to think about all of these things in real time and intuitively, rather than getting locked up in the theory.
  
  I doubt that was the process and intention of the inventor, and a lot of practitioners believed in Ki or Chi or magic juice... but it's all just physics boiled down to something people can easily visualize. And, yes, the problems start when people begin believing the magic juice, and start proclaiming that they can influence someone's chi from a distance, or some shit. That's a far cry from: if I bend your wrist this way, it's incredibly painful and you're going to fall over to stop it, or break your wrist.
- Which includes pregnant women.
- It wasn't a command. The Crusades were an offer to make murder a prayer for salvation.
  
  Was quite popular. Didn't matter if they were Saracens, Jewish folks, or even other Xians by the end.
Those are certainly words. Maybe you should stick to painting with crayons, though - the result might make more sense.
So if I call you a moron for not believing that the Easter Bunny is a real deity, you shouldn't criticize me?

Religious people literally believe in things that mostly are no longer believed in after someone reaches about 10 years of age. All this thing's, Santa Claus, slender man, you name it, it's all dropped as fantasy yet religion keeps being reinforced causing actual sane adults to believe that there is a magical sky being.

As this article goes to show, it's a great tool to control the populace, it has little real world value.