Some thoughts on the recent ‘hack’ of Answering Islam

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 didn’t 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?

1. If you feel you have to attack Christian web sites because they are ‘enemies of Islam’, you are implying that Muslims are somehow weak-minded, easily fooled, and need to be prevented from reading alternative views. It is as if you are saying "Oh, these terrible Christian sites are causing Muslims to doubt their faith – we must protect our poor weak Muslim brothers and sisters". You are actually insulting the intelligence of your fellow Muslims!
2. You represent a minority of the many Muslims on the internet who, while disagreeing with Christians, would not at all condone your illegal tactics. (And be sure, your activities are illegal and I have brought this to the attention of your network provider). Doing what you did feeds islamophobia – it reinforces the view that "Islam is a religion of conquest which intends to impose itself on others, against their will if neccessary". Many Muslims would disagree with you.
3. You are implying (to my mind anyway) that Allah is not capable of defending his religion and needs ‘cyber-jihadists’ to defend his honour! Surely, you have nothing to fear from the truth – if Islam is the religion of God, it will stand up to any amount of intellectual scrutiny. Answering Islam gives Muslims the chance to reconsider their beliefs from a wider perspective. If those beliefs are true, they will stand up to question. They don’t need your Taliban-style tactics to defend them ..., at least, not if they genuinely are from Allah ...

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.

Let’s 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, let’s be honest, there are many Muslims who DO think like this, and there is plenty of material in the Qur’an 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, don’t 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