For context: this “religious body” is governmental.
In pakistan, military has gotten so powerful that they literally kidnap and torture you for being critical of them. And if you live outside pakistan they kidnap and torture your family members, demanding you to remove your posts.
And recently pakistani people have started to become more and more anti-military. So they are using VPNs to hide their identity to protect themselves.
This “religious body” is making it seem like this is to stop porn but in reality its about stopping people from being critical of military rule.
Edit: they banned twitter in february because people were organizing anti-military protests there. So the people started using VPNs and now they want to ban VPNs.
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.