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Faith Freedom International is a secularist organization whose goals are to "unmask Islam" and "to help Muslims leave" Islam. It was founded by Ali Sina, an ex-Muslim Iranian residing in Canada, who has issued a standing challenge that he will remove the Faith Freedom International 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

Debates

In 2001, Faith Freedom International issued a challenge to Muslims. The challenge is to disprove all his allegations against Mohammad, and if they succeed, the website will be removed, and they will receive $50,000. Since then, writers of Faith Freedom International have held numerous debates with both Muslim scholars and non-scholars on his website. Prominent scholars among those who debated with members of Faith Freedom International include Abu Saleh, Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Dr. Alireza Assar, Khalid Zaheer, a student of Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, Yamin Zakaria and Edip Yuksel. Arguably the most prominent of the scholars with whom Sina exchanged a letter with was the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, the former deputy of Ayatollah Khomeini who later became a dissident and critic of the Islamic Republic. 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.

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 Qoom 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

In September 2006, Faith Freedom International launched WikiIslam, a website utilizing the MediaWiki software in which contributors "...can safely state opinions critical of Islam without fear of censorship." To contribute to WikiIslam you must login so IP addresses are never displayed . The website 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 — if using the criteria for Islamophobia as suggested by the Runnymede Trust — states that "it should be quite easy to label most of the material published on WikiIslam as expressions of Islamophobia.", though the article does not conclude this is fully true as "it becomes much more difficult to argue that all information posted on WikiIslam is Islamophobic by nature." According to the journal, the wiki also demonstrates a clear bias by tolerating only negative or critical opinions of Islam.

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 also 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". Mr. Sina suggests that removal of "Israel and American imperialism" will eventually defeat Islam from within. Non existence of these so called enemies will render Islam to have feuds within its own sects.

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)".

Sina also believes the Muslims "deface the character of the Western cities," and 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."

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."

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." This claim, however is ambiguous, as Ali later asserts 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." The reason why Ali Sina primarily focuses on Islam may be because he is a former Muslim. 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.

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 occured. 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

• Criticism of Islam
• Apostasy in Islam
• Historical persecution by Muslims
• Persecution of Muslims
• List of notable former Muslims
• Criticism of the Qur'an
• Internet censorship in Pakistan

References

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1. Faith Freedom international mission statement
2. Was Falwell Wrong? by Ali Sina, Japan Today
3. The God Delusion, page 379
4. Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out, Page 433-436
5. Faith Freedom International's challenge
6. Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi vs. Ali Sina
7. Yamin Zakaria vs. Ali Sina
8. Exposing Blindness of "Freethinkers" about Islam- A Debate between Yamin Zakaria and Ali Sina (Yamin Zakaria's version)
9. Edip Yuksel vs. Ali Sina
10. Intelligent People's guide to code-19 and a debate between Edip Yuksel and Ali Sina (Edip Yuksel's version)
11. Letter from Montazeri
12. ^ Ali Sina's letter to Zakir Naik
13. http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/ZakirNaikp2.htm
14. Debate with Reza Pahlavi II – Ali Sina version
15. Ali Sina's challenge
16. Ali Sina's Forum
17. Ali Sina's debates
18. websites banned in Saudi Arabia
19. http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/Ghamidip6.htm
22. http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=faithfreedom&tld=org
23. Alexa.com's traffic ranking for: Faith Freedom International
24. Alexa.com: Ratings for FaithFreedom.org
25. Alexa traffic detials
26. Faith Freedom at ranking.com
27. "Faith Freedom International". Site Summary. Site Meter. July 14, 2005.
28. WikiIslam welcome statement
29. Will my IP address be revealed?
30. Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam, Journal: Contemporary Islam, publisher Springer Netherlands, ISSN 1872-0218 (Print) 1872-0226
31. Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, p. 5, Runnymede Trust (1997).
32. Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam, Journal: Contemporary Islam, publisher Springer Netherlands, ISSN 1872-0218 (Print) 1872-0226
33. Full text of Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam
34. Asia Times: Islam: Religion or political ideology? August 10, 2004
35. FrontPageMagazine.com: Symposium: Gender Apartheid and Islam, by Jamie Glazov, December 31, 2004
36. Islam and the Muslim mind
37. http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/fascisticislam.htm
38. Defeating Islam
39. Worldnetdaily.com: Ex-Muslim's site trashes Muhammad, September 16, 2004
40. Defeating Islam
41. Defeating Islam
42. ^ Iranian.com - "Viva Oriana!" - In response to Azar Majedi’s open letter to Oriana Fallaci
43. Debate between Dr. G. R. Farhad Assar and Ali Sina
44. An Open Challenge to my Muslim Friends, Avjit Roy
45. Allah vs. God, Ali Sina in reply to Kamakazi41050
46. ^ FaithFreedom.org: Oped - Defeating Islam
47. FaithFreedom.org: FAQ
48. http://www.faithfreedom.org/mcommets.htm
49. http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60209c.htm
50. The InfidelGuy Archives, Tape 253 The Psychological Profile of Muhammad (...)

External links

• Faith Freedom International - Official home page
• WikiIslam home page

Articles related to Faith Freedom International or Ali Sina

• Hugh Fitzgerald on Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina
• Frontpagemag.com: Symposium: Gender Apartheid and Islam
• WorldNetDaily- Ex-Muslim's site trashes Muhammad
• Coverage of Faith Freedom by Jim Ball of Sydney's radio station 2GB
• Sherlock Holmes and me - Barbara J. Stock Comments on Ali Sina and Yamin Zakaria's Debate
• Islam: Religion or political ideology? - Asia Times
• Ali Sina representing Faith Freedom in an article on Iranian.com
• Edip Yuksel v Ali Sina - 19.org, website by Edip Yüksel
• A Debate between Yamin Zakaria and Ali Sina - International Institute of Peace

Similar websites

• Jihad Watch
• Answering-islam.org
• Secularislam.org

Opposing Websites

• Answering-christianity.com - Rebuttals to FaithFreedom.org web site and Ali Sina
• Faithfreedom.com - A website opposing the views of Ali Sina and Faith Freedom International

• Criticism of religion
• Websites critical of Islam
• Islam-related controversies