| evan Iran, who explicitly see it as an existential threat It probably is. The real question is should the outside let the government of Iran disconnect their citizens to keep their ideals? Should "wilful obstruction of facts known and shared by other humans" become a kind of humanitarian offence, with a bit of leeway for yet-to-be-agreed reasonable law enforcement purposes? Should it become a more pressing consideration the more the difference between rich scientific countries and closed-off/poor/controlled societies grows? The UN human rights declaration includes Education, and the Cairo declaration of human rights in Islam forbids discrimination on racial, political affiliation and belief grounds, and also "emphasizes the "full right to freedom and self-determination", and its opposition to enslavement, oppression, exploitation and colonialism." "22(c) states: "Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may [..] disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith." 22(d) states "It is not permitted to arouse nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form of racial discrimination." (Source: Wikipedia). A right to education isn't much good if it only covers being educated in what some people want you to know. Information may not be used to disrupt or weaken the faith of an Islamic society by that convention, which the internet probably would, but censoring it for being "western" seems close to nationalistic and doctrinal hatred. (Iran may have nothing to do with the CDHRI). |