© Akhtar Soomro / Reuters
The court ruling came as the result of a petition started by concerned citizen Abdul Waheed, who complained that promoting the holiday in the media and across social networks is "against Islamic teachings and should be banned immediately."
All print and online media outlets have been ordered to "stop all Valentine's Day promotions," and celebrating the occasion in public too has been banned.
Justice Shaukat Aziz, who made the ruling, directed the Federal Ministry of Information, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) and the Islamabad High Commission to start implementing the court's decision.
On social media, many Pakistanis reacted to the court's decision with a mixture of sarcasm and dismay.
Valentine's Day has a mixed following in Pakistan. In big cities, restaurants, delivery services and bakeries often come up with Valentine's Day promotions, but there are also "Haya Day" campaigns by conservative students which promote traditional Islamic modesty. Last year, President Mamnoon Hussain said that Pakistanis should avoid celebrating Valentine's Day as it is a Western tradition that has nothing to do with Pakistan's Muslim culture.
Valentine's Day is a tradition that may have had its origins in an ancient Roman fertility festival and was subsequently adopted by the Catholic Church to commemorate one or more Christian martyrs named Valentine, who were persecuted in the Roman Empire. It is now a day for celebrating love and romance in many parts of the world.
Isn't anyone else getting really tired of these "origin" stories from 100's or even 1000's of years ago as if we can apply 21st century thinking to the actions of the ancients ? Can't we just have traditions of they way things are now and have been in our lifetimes?
Every "holiday" now seems to be a history lesson on the evils of or weirdness of what people thought and or acted like that are meaningless in this day and age.......IMHO.
I wonder if the Roman intellectuals of the day sat around telling everyone that what they were celebrating was something completely different 1000's years prior...maybe this isn't even from Roman times but nobody wrote it down until then.