Pakistan’s Top Islamic Cleric Declares VPNs ‘Haram’

Pakistan’s top cleric has decreed that the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to browse the internet is against Islamic law. The declaration from the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) was announced on Monday, with chairman Raghib Naeemi saying that the Shariah (Islamic law) allows the government to prevent actions that lead to the “spread of evil.” The council’s ruling that VPNs are “haram,” or forbidden, comes as the Ministry of Interior seeks to prohibit these services in the country, which help internet users evade censorship and monitoring of their internet habits. Naeemi went on to say that any platform used for posting controversial or blasphemous content, as well as material against Pakistan’s national integrity, “should be stopped immediately.”...