After a short period during which the site was blocked in the country, people in Pakistan are again being allowed limited access to popular video sharing website YouTube.
A ban on the popular, Google-owned video-sharing website has been in place since the international friction which followed the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in several Danish newspapers five years ago.
But a leading government official told Reuters news agency that access to “sacrilegious or profane material” would remain restricted.
The day before Pakistan blocked YouTube, it took similar action against Facebook in response to an online competition posted on the site inviting people to draw pictures of Mohammed.
“We have lifted the ban on only that part which is not displaying any sacrilegious or profane material,” said Naguibullah Malik, Secretary of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
But while many of the videos connected with the competition were blocked, others remained accessible in Pakistan on Thursday morning.
Most Muslims consider any representation of the Prophet Mohammad to be blasphemous. Malik said his ministry had acted unilaterally in blocking YouTube, but that Facebook was banned on the orders of a court.
“We had banned one URL of Facebook but the High Court ordered the banning of the entire Facebook,” he said.
The case will come before a court again on May 31, according to Reuters.
The publication of cartoons of the Prophet in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. About 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006, five of them in Pakistan.