Deal­ing With Anti-Islam­ic Websites

One of the down­sides of the Inter­net is that it has giv­en our crit­ics and ene­mies an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pub­licly defame the reli­gion of Islam. I guess this is the price of hav­ing free­dom of speech. Some­times you have to read and hear things which are just plain detestable. The fact of the mat­ter is that Islam has been defamed from the very begin­ning by its ene­mies and this is not about to change any time soon. What’s more, since Mus­lims are in a very weak posi­tion these days, the amount of anti-Islam­ic pro­pa­gan­da is on the rise from many quar­ters. I am sure we have all encoun­tered numer­ous web­sites which have slan­dered the Prophet(P), twist­ed the mean­ing of the Qur’an, attacked the Com­pan­ions of the Prophet (P), etc. The more dis­turb­ing thing is the ease with which mil­lions of peo­ple now have access to this infor­ma­tion as a result of the growth of the Internet.

Our first reac­tion is to get angry and get all fired up with a zeal to do some­thing about it when we find these offen­sive sites. It is indeed a good sign of strong faith if we get angry when our faith is under attack, and may Allah always keep our faith in Islam strong. One must keep in mind that, for the most part, these peo­ple are inter­est­ed in noth­ing more than to arouse feel­ings of hatred and fury against Mus­lims and gen­er­at­ing poi­so­nous feel­ings in the hearts of the read­ers. Some web­sites are much more sub­tle, how­ev­er, and crit­i­cize Islam in a more ​“civ­i­lized” man­ner. Actu­al­ly, this sec­ond kind of approach may be more dan­ger­ous as they tend to leave the impres­sion that they are hon­est­ly seek­ing the truth, when in fact they are not.

Here I want to offer a few sug­ges­tions on deal­ing with these anti-Islam­ic web­sites so we can more effec­tive­ly counter this con­tin­u­ing and mount­ing menace :

1. Keep your cool : As I said before, it is good to be angry when you see Islam attacked, but keep your cool and act with a lev­el head. When we are over­ly angry we can­not act ratio­nal­ly and thus we under­mine our goals. We will do and say things which lat­er on we will regret. For exam­ple, we may be tempt­ed to attack the per­son­’s reli­gion in a bad way which is not per­mis­si­ble in Islam.

2. Don’t write the web­mas­ter back unless you are ready : For the most part these peo­ple thrive on con­fronta­tion. They would love for you to respond and are ready for a quick answer. Remem­ber, many of these peo­ple know a lot about Islam so if you are not ready for them they will sound­ly defeat you in any argu­ment. Also, if you answer back but don’t have the prop­er knowl­edge you will end up mak­ing Islam and Mus­lims look worse. Some web­mas­ters actu­al­ly post all respons­es on the web­site for all to read. The more sil­ly the response, the more like­ly it will be placed on the site. Please note, just because some­one wins a par­tic­u­lar argu­ment does not mean they are right. The los­er may just not have all the infor­ma­tion on hand at the time of the argument.

3. Don’t try to have the page removed from the Inter­net : Many Mus­lims try to have the web­site removed from the Inter­net alto­geth­er by writ­ing the com­pa­ny which hosts the site and com­plain­ing. In my opin­ion this is a waste of time. Even if the host removed the site, they can open up in a few days under anoth­er host so our time is wast­ed on such efforts.

4. Don’t pub­li­cize the site to oth­ers : One of the biggest mis­takes we com­mit is to tell oth­ers about the offen­sive web­site. All this does is give the site own­er free pub­lic­i­ty which is what he/​she wants. If you see an offen­sive site don’t spread it all over the place as you are actu­al­ly help­ing the site own­er when you are doing this.

5. Best defense is a good offense : Final­ly, the best defense against anti-Islam­ic web­sites is to devel­op your own excel­lent web­site which presents Islam in a beau­ti­ful and accu­rate man­ner. Many peo­ple are out there search­ing for answers and more and more are turn­ing to the Inter­net to find these answers. Pos­si­bly they could vis­it your web­site and as a result become Mus­lim. Also, oth­er Mus­lims could use your site to get infor­ma­tion they need for da‘wah or research and Allah will reward you for pro­vid­ing this ser­vice. Even if you can­not start a web­site, you can at least sub­mit arti­cles to exist­ing web­sites which they can use so that all can get the ben­e­fit. Remem­ber, you can play a valu­able role in improv­ing the Islam­ic con­tent on the Inter­net. Don’t wait for some­one else to do it.

I hope this advice helps. May Allah help us to be more effec­tive in defend­ing Islam.