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Faith Freedom International

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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)

Faith Freedom International (FFI) is a secularist organization which is critical of Islam. FFI was founded by Ali Sina, the pseudonym of 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-based site WikiIslam.

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. Sina promises 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 for his readership 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.

Debates

In response to the Challenge, Muslim scholars and non-scholars have debated with writers of FFI. Edip Yuksel held such a debate.

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. The Public Interest Registry service used by all .org domains, and Alexa.com state that FFI website is hosted in Qom province, Iran.

Traffic rankings

The 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 fifty 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. Although the site claims that anyone can edit content, editing privileges require an account that is only given with special permission.

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 argues 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

According to Asia Times, the founder of Faith Freedom International, Ali Sina, wrongly believes that Islam is not a religion but a political movement. He also suggests that, among other things, Islam allows the Muslims to wage war against the non-Muslims. Sina describes Muhammad as a "rapist", a "pedophile", and mass murderer".

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 - Founder challenges: Prove me wrong and I'll take down page". TESTING THE FAITH. WorldNetDaily. 16 Sept 2004. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  2. ^ Jamie Glazov (31 Dec 2004). "Symposium: Gender Apartheid and Islam". FrontPageMagazine.com. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  3. Dawkins, Richard (2006). The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. p. 379. ISBN 0-618-68000-4.
  4. Ibn Warraq (2003). Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp. 433–436. ISBN 1-59102-068-9.
  5. Ali Sina's Forum
  6. Ali Sina's debates
  7. Edip Yuksel vs. Ali Sina; Intelligent People's guide to code-19 and a debate between Edip Yuksel and Ali Sina (Edip Yuksel's version)
  8. websites banned in Saudi Arabia
  9. ^ http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/Ghamidip6.htm
  11. http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=faithfreedom&tld=org
  13. ^ Alexa.com: Ratings for FaithFreedom.org
  14. Faith Freedom at ranking.com
  15. "Faith Freedom International". Site Summary. Site Meter. July 14, 2005.
  16. On Monday Sept 4, 2006, (WikiIslam) was opened to the public.
  17. ^ Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam, Journal: Contemporary Islam, publisher Springer Netherlands, ISSN 1872-0218 (Print) 1872-0226
  18. "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.
  19. Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, p. 5, Runnymede Trust (1997).
  20. Asia Times: Islam: Religion or political ideology? August 10, 2004

External links

Articles related to Faith Freedom International or Ali Sina

Similar websites

Opposing Websites

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