Cell phone users in Pakistan will soon be unable to send text messages including sexual terms and the words Jesus Christ, the Dawn News TV channel reported on Friday.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered operators to block texts featuring any of a list of 1,500 words in a document dated November 14, the TV station said.
“All the texts containing the words from the list, must be blocked,” Dawn quoted Anjum Nida Rahman, a spokeswoman for Telenor Pakistan, as saying.
The list of the banned words includes sexually explicit words as well as rather neutral terms like "idiot" or "fart". The ban on the word ‘Jesus Christ’ has raised concerns about religious freedom.
The PTA’s letter said the order was legitimate according to the 1996 law preventing people from sending “false, fabricated, indecent or obscene” information via mobile phones.
The document also stated that the freedom of speech can be restricted “in the interest of the glory of Islam.”
