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==Debates== ==Debates==
In 2001, Faith Freedom International issued a challenge to Muslims to disprove all his allegations against ], and if they succeed, the website will be removed, and they will receive US$50,000.<ref></ref> Since then, writers of FFI have held numerous debates with both Muslim scholars and non-scholars on the website. Prominent scholars among those who debated with members of FFI include Khalid Zaheer, a student of ],<ref></ref> ]<ref></ref><ref></ref> and ].<ref></ref><ref></ref> Sina says that he exchanged a letter<ref></ref> with was the ]. Sina also posted a letter in his website claiming to be sent to Dr. ]<ref name=FFI_Naik></ref> inviting him for an open online debate. Mr. Sina received the information that Dr. Naik does not debate online but rather in person in public view.<ref name=FFI_Naik></ref> Dr. Naik's office said "There are hundreds of such Ali Sina who have requested Dr. Zakir Naik to debate with him to gain popularity."<ref>http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/ZakirNaikp2.htm</ref>
In 2001, Faith Freedom International issued a challenge to Muslims to disprove all his allegations against ], and if they succeed, the website will be removed, and they will receive US$50,000.<ref></ref>

Several months prior to the establishment of Faith Freedom International, in January, ], Sina had a discussion via email with ], the son of the late ] of Iran, regarding a potential regime in Iran that could replace the current one. Sina argued it should be a ], Reza Pahlavi advocated a democratic government determined via a national ] which could lead to a ].<ref> &ndash; Ali Sina version</ref>


==The Website's Challenge== ==The Website's Challenge==

Revision as of 01:52, 10 September 2007

Faith Freedom International
File:FFI-logo.png
File:FFI-2.pngLogo and Screenshot of FFI
Type of siteReligious/Political
Available inEnglish, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Spanish
OwnerAli Sina
Created byAli Sina
RevenueDonations
URLhttp://www.faithfreedom.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationeNom, Inc. (R39-LROR)

Ali Sina redirects here, as it is the name the founder of Faith Freedom International uses.

Faith Freedom International (FFI) is a secularist organization which is critical of Islam. FFI was founded by Ali Sina, an Iranian ex-Muslim residing in Canada, who has issued a standing challenge that he will remove the FFI website if proven wrong on a number of issues. Faith Freedom International is listed by Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion, as one of the few Islamic related "...friendly address(es), for individuals needing support in escaping from religion". FFI's mission statement is included in Ibn Warraq's book Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out.

Faith Freedom International hosts the Mediawiki page WikiIslam.

Debates

In 2001, Faith Freedom International issued a challenge to Muslims to disprove all his allegations against Mohammad, and if they succeed, the website will be removed, and they will receive US$50,000. Since then, writers of FFI have held numerous debates with both Muslim scholars and non-scholars on the website. Prominent scholars among those who debated with members of FFI include Khalid Zaheer, a student of Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, Yamin Zakaria and Edip Yuksel. Sina says that he exchanged a letter with was the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. Sina also posted a letter in his website claiming to be sent to Dr. Zakir Naik inviting him for an open online debate. Mr. Sina received the information that Dr. Naik does not debate online but rather in person in public view. Dr. Naik's office said "There are hundreds of such Ali Sina who have requested Dr. Zakir Naik to debate with him to gain popularity."

Several months prior to the establishment of Faith Freedom International, in January, 2001, Sina had a discussion via email with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran, regarding a potential regime in Iran that could replace the current one. Sina argued it should be a democratic republic, Reza Pahlavi advocated a democratic government determined via a national referendum which could lead to a constitutional monarchy.

The Website's Challenge

The challenge of the Faith Freedom International website is that Ali Sina, the founder of the website will remove the website if all his allegations against Muhammad are proven wrong. Ali has promised a prize of $50,000 to "...anyone who can disprove my charges and prove Islam is a true religion in an objective (not subjective) way." He invites any refutation of the charges to be posted to his forum and he publishes the resulting debates to allow people to judge the success or failure of the challenge.

Alteration

On 29th July 2007, Sina altered the challenge so that he would now only debate with recognised scholars of Islam. The reward now stands at $50,000 to any scholar who proves him wrong and $50,000 to any non-scholar who persuades a successful scholar to debate. This alteration was explained on the grounds that the challenge had now stood for six years and those who took it up were increasingly using the same arguments repeatedly.

Website access in Muslim countries

According to a 2002 study by professor Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman of Harvard University, Saudi Arabia had banned the Faith Freedom Website .. Khalid Zaheer, a former student of Ghamidi had earlier reported that he was unable to access faithfreedom.org in Pakistan. The website operates well in one of the most populous Muslim countries, Indonesia and also Pakistan (ibid). The Public Interest Registry (PIR)service used by all .org domains,and Alexa.com state that FFI website is hosted in Qom province, Iran..

Disambiguation

There is another website with similar name, faithfreedom.com. This website is contrary to Faith Freedom International and claims to provide the rebuttals of the accusations of 'Faith Freedom International' against Islam. Note that this website is typosquatted on the .com Top Level Domain (TLD).

Traffic rankings

Traffic ranking for Faith Freedom International has fluctuated since its inception in June 2001. According to the online source Alexa, which reports traffic from Alexa toolbar users, in early 2003 faithfreedom.org was in the top ten thousand sites on the Internet. Currently it is in the top thirty thousand. It saw a significant spike in site traffic during February 2006. This occurred at the onset of the cartoon riots stemming from the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, but has since returned to average levels. The site has had significant highs and lows. During the end of September 2006 the site went below the top 100,000 and then spiked up and reached 20,000 by the beginning of October. During the same month it went back down to 60,000. It has fluctuated between 20,000 and 80,000 till February 2007, and has fallen down below 100,000 again. According to Ranking.com, Faith Freedom International is in between the top 30,000 and 40,000 websites. According to Site Meter, Faith Freedom International has had over 25 million views since its creation, receives approximately 10,000 visitors every day and about 1 million page views every month.

WikiIslam

File:Wikiislam logo.png
WikiIslam: a wiki hosted by Faith Freedom International.

In September 2006, Faith Freedom International launched WikiIslam, a community-edited wiki collecting negative and critical material about Islam. According to the FAQ section on the website, "the main difference between WikiIslam and Misplaced Pages is that opinions critical of Islam are not censored on WikiIslam for political correctness." Due to the controversial nature of the website, it has been subject to vandalism, due to which increased security measures have been employed.

WikiIslam is the subject of an article in the 7/2007 issue of the journal Contemporary Islam, entitled "Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam", which observes that the website commits selection bias by collecting only negative or critical material. The article states that "In relation to the criteria set up by the Runnymede Trust... ...it should be quite easy to label most of the material published on WikiIslam as expressions of Islamophobia." Because of the presence of material obtained from other websites, such as MEMRI, the article notes that "it becomes much more difficult to argue that all information posted on WikiIslam is Islamophobic by nature."

Views of Ali Sina

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Islam and Muhammad: The founder of Faith Freedom International, Ali Sina, believes that Islam is not a religion but a political movement, that among other things allow the Muslims to wage war against the non-Muslims. He describes Islam as "unflinchingly violent, extremist, reactionary, intolerant, anti-Western and misogynistic" and "as the disease of mankind, and the source of all these wars, terror attacks and human miseries". He believes that "Israel and American imperialism" are used as scapegoats in the Islamic world in much the same way that the Nazis used Jews as scapegoats; he believes that, without these scapegoats, those countries would be full of internal strife.

Sina describes Muhammad as a "rapist", a "pedophile",a "monster", and mass murderer".

Sina claims that because of Islam, Muslims "have no pride, no self esteem, no dignity, no honor", and are thus "evil". He further claims that Muslims are "bullies" because of this low self esteem. Sina claims that "Muslims are not fools" but "so much trapped in it (Islam) that they can’t leave it (Islam)".

Islam in Europe: Sina believes that Muslims immigrants are disrespectful towards native cultures and especially to other religions. He opposes "multiculturalism" on the grounds that some cultures contain grossly immoral practices, which should not be allowed to take root in Europe. He has described the Koran as a "bloody book of terror."

He believes that Islamic holy war, Jihad, is never done by Muslims when they are poor, as "they have instruction" to wait until they are rich enough to win. Sina believes that the "revolt of the suburbs in France had nothing to do with poverty just as the revolts over cartoons had nothing to do with poverty." Instead, he asserts that Muslims were just "testing the waters" before planning another "attack." These, Sina says, are part of "maneuvers to take control of Europe."

One of the few cases where Sina seems to sympathise with Muslims is over the Balkans. He has stated that he supported the N.A.T.O. attacks on Serbia, and that Muslims were living under oppression..

Communism: Ali Sina has stated that he considers "communism is an atheistic dogma/religion which has nothing to do with freethinking and democracy", and that the 20th century was "bloodied" by "Marxist Terrorists." He has also criticized Iranian communist activist Azar Majedi for not accepting that Marxism is a "hoax" and it is "finished".

Sina criticizes the Iranian communists as "anti patriotic" for the same reason as "the Muslims are anti-patriotic," and compares their similarity to Islamists, saying that the two both "lie without scruples, twist the facts and even contradict their own words." When talking about religion in general, Sina has pointed out that Communism has killed more people than many world religions.

Other faiths: Sina is on record stating he believes Muslims, Christians and Jews follow a false doctrine. Another writer at FFI, Avjit Roy, believes that "every divine scripture" (including the Vedas) is scientifically "fallacious". Despite some disagreements with religious views in general, Sina has also stated that he has no problem with people becoming Christian or any other religion, as long as it helps that person to behave kindly towards others. Although they claim with certainty that a person called Jesus existed and lot of what is attributed to him is true, Ali believes that much of Christianity is a fairytale and is for the feeble minded e.g. "The stories of virgin birth, walking on water, converting water to wine or resurrection and ascension." He adds that there is a good in Christianity, which makes it worth to preserve.

The website believes that unlike Islam, other religions have something to offer, saying that "most other religions, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Bahaism , etc. are mixed bags of good and bad. You can compare them to ore. There is lots of dirt but in the midst of that dirt, there are gems and precious metals." Also he believes that Christianity and Judaism have been critically studied already by other scholars and that unlike Islam, they represent no threat to the peace and security of the world.

Non-religious views: Ali Sina is generally supportive of America's role in the world, but is also critical of human rights abuses on its part. He is a world federalist, and believes that nations would only cease to exploit each other once a federation of democratic nations has been established. He believes in national pride.. Over Abu Ghraib, he stated that the soldiers should have been reported privately rather than publicly, and that they should have been merely dismissed from the military rather than imprisoned; he believes that the whistleblower in the incident was a "traitor". He believes that humans are not naturally evil but are made evil by poor upbringings. He generally has liberal opinions on allowing different traditions and beliefs within a society, but holds a similar view to Karl Popper in saying that Communist, Nazi and Islamist groups should be viewed as a threat to any open society. His views on sex are fairly conservative.

Death threat claims

Ali Sina claims that he receives death threats. In July, 2005, FFI posted that it had been threatened with a lawsuit, however the lawsuit never occurred. The archive copy of Ali Sina's interview with The Infidel Guy has been removed "as Ali Sina has been receiving Death Threats".

See also

References

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources.
Find sources: "Faith Freedom International" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
  1. "Ex-Muslim's site trashes Muhammad". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved 2007-06-25.
  2. Dawkins, Richard (2006). The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. p. 379. ISBN 0-618-68000-4.
  3. Ibn Warraq (2003). Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp. 433–436. ISBN 1-59102-068-9.
  4. Faith Freedom International's challenge
  5. Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi vs. Ali Sina
  6. Yamin Zakaria vs. Ali Sina
  7. Exposing Blindness of "Freethinkers" about Islam- A Debate between Yamin Zakaria and Ali Sina (Yamin Zakaria's version)
  8. Edip Yuksel vs. Ali Sina
  9. Intelligent People's guide to code-19 and a debate between Edip Yuksel and Ali Sina (Edip Yuksel's version)
  10. Letter from Montazeri
  11. ^ Ali Sina's letter to Zakir Naik
  12. http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/ZakirNaikp2.htm
  13. Debate with Reza Pahlavi II – Ali Sina version
  14. Ali Sina's challenge
  15. Ali Sina's Forum
  16. Ali Sina's debates
  17. websites banned in Saudi Arabia
  18. http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/Ghamidip6.htm
  21. http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=faithfreedom&tld=org
  22. Alexa.com's traffic ranking for: Faith Freedom International
  23. Alexa.com: Ratings for FaithFreedom.org
  24. Alexa traffic detials
  25. Faith Freedom at ranking.com
  26. "Faith Freedom International". Site Summary. Site Meter. July 14, 2005.
  27. On Monday Sept 4, 2006, (WikiIslam) was opened to the public.
  28. ^ Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam, Journal: Contemporary Islam, publisher Springer Netherlands, ISSN 1872-0218 (Print) 1872-0226
  29. "Compared to “Muslim homepages,” i.e. those set up by believing Muslims, WikiIslam contains only negative and critical examples. This bias is clearly represented in the section called “laughing with the prophet”, which presents stories and reports from the life of prophet Muhammad (i.e. hadith reports). My impression is that the stories reported by WikiIslam have merely been selected to show that Muslims are ignorant, backward or even stupid." ibid.
  30. Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, p. 5, Runnymede Trust (1997).
  31. Asia Times: Islam: Religion or political ideology? August 10, 2004
  32. FrontPageMagazine.com: Symposium: Gender Apartheid and Islam, by Jamie Glazov, December 31, 2004
  33. Islam and the Muslim mind
  34. http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/fascisticislam.htm
  35. Defeating Islam
  36. Worldnetdaily.com: Ex-Muslim's site trashes Muhammad, September 16, 2004
  37. Defeating Islam
  38. Defeating Islam
  39. ^ Iranian.com - "Viva Oriana!" - In response to Azar Majedi’s open letter to Oriana Fallaci
  40. http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=63 Also bottom of the page http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/WhyILeftIslamp2.htm
  41. http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1310
  42. Debate between Dr. G. R. Farhad Assar and Ali Sina
  43. An Open Challenge to my Muslim Friends, Avjit Roy
  44. Allah vs. God, Ali Sina in reply to Kamakazi41050
  45. ^ FaithFreedom.org: Oped - Defeating Islam
  46. FaithFreedom.org: FAQ
  47. http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=63
  48. http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60628.htm
  49. http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1372
  50. http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1242
  51. http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1310
  52. http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina50918.htm
  53. http://www.faithfreedom.org/mcommets.htm
  54. http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60209c.htm
  55. The InfidelGuy Archives, Tape 253 The Psychological Profile of Muhammad (...)

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