I am the system administrator for the Answering-Islam.org domain. A week ago, on 2 September 2004, some Turkish Islamic hackers succeeded in changing the registration of the Answering-Islam domain and re-directed the traffic to an Islamic site with a similar name. The Answering-Islam web server was not itself hacked, and the method they used was technically trivial. But it was inconvenient for the many thousands of people who daily come to read the articles on Answering Islam. I was asked to write some thoughts on the episode.
It didnt take long to discover who the hackers were, and how they achieved their result. They even have their own web site, www.cyber-warrior.org, and their mission statement, in English, is published here:
Their mission statement makes disturbing reading. They regard themselves as some sort of guardians of Islam and see it as their job to attack any other web sites that they feel are a threat to Islam:
* The Main aims and jobs of TIM: To damage the sites which are boardcasting as enemy of Ýslam, atheist, makin the brains turbid, satanist and pornografik and to stop this kind of sites.
I guess they attacked Answering Islam because they feel it falls under the first criterion: "enemy of Islam".
Personally, I regard this as just plain silly, even childish.
Answering Islam is a response to the many Islamic sites which openly attack Christian beliefs, often in the most derogatory terms. These sites often attract young, educated Muslims with their simple-minded proofs that the Bible is corrupted, or that missionaries are evil, or whatever. Given the growth of those sites, Answering Islam is a way of allowing Muslims to consider the Christian response.
No-one forces Muslims to read Answering Islam !
Yet many thousands chose to do so every day why? Probably because deep down, they realise that their ideas are weak, their arguments flawed, and that much Islamic apologetic is simple-minded tosh (English slang for "nonsense").
Maybe the Cyber-warriors feel that Muslims are losing their intellectual credibility, and more direct action is necessary ...
In fact, I would argue that they are doing more harm to Islam than any Christian web site. Why?
I think there is a deeper lesson that Muslims need to learn from this childish episode. If Islam genuinely is a religion of peace and if there is truly no compulsion in religion, then it is the responsibility of moderate Muslims to stop these extremists from insulting the religion.
Lets face it Islam has a bad image the popular view is that Muslims are secretly out to conquer the world, that they have the right to impose their religion on others, by force if necessary, and that those who oppose them must be silenced.
Now, lets be honest, there are many Muslims who DO think like this, and there is plenty of material in the Quran and hadith that can be used to justify this view. But there are many other Muslims (who I would call "moderate" here) who do not think like this, and regard this idea as a dangerous perversion of Islam.
Well, if you are a moderate Muslim, it is YOUR responsibility to fight against extreme views. The wider world has yet to be convinced by your moderate views at present we are not hearing you loudly and clearly enough. I know that the media is more likely to report extreme views, but that does not excuse you from trying.
Do yourself a favour, dont shirk from your moral duty let these cyber extremists know that you regard them as enemies of the religion you hold dear.
9 September 2004
Attacks on Answering Islam
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