Faith Freedom International

Infobox Website
name = Faith Freedom International



caption = Logo and Screenshot of FFI
url = http://www.faithfreedom.org
commercial = No
type = Religious/Political
language = English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Spanish
registration = eNom, Inc. (R39-LROR)
owner = Ali Sina
author = Ali Sina
launch date = October 26, 2001
current status =
revenue = Donations

Faith Freedom International (FFI) is an Internet website that is critical of Islam.Cite web|url=http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16440|title=Symposium: Gender Apartheid and Islam|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=September 18|publisher=FrontPageMagazine.com|year=31 Dec 2004|author=Jamie Glazov|language=English] FFI identifies itself as "a grassroots worldwide movement of ex-Muslims and all those who are concerned about the rise of the Islamic threat". According to the website, FFI was founded by an Iranian ex-Muslim residing in Canada, going by the pseudonym of "Ali Sina." On the website, Ali Sina 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".cite book | title=The God Delusion| last=Dawkins| first=Richard| authorlink=Richard Dawkins| date=2006| pages=379| publisher=Houghton Mifflin Co.| location=Boston| id=ISBN 0-618-68000-4] FFI's mission statement is included in Ibn Warraq's book .cite book | title=Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out| last=Ibn Warraq| authorlink=Ibn Warraq| date=2003| pages=433-436| publisher=Prometheus Books| location=Amherst, NY| id=ISBN 1-59102-068-9]

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, says he will remove the website if all his allegations against Muhammad are proven wrong.Cite web|url=http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40473|title=Ex-Muslim's site trashes Muhammad - Founder challenges: Prove me wrong and I'll take down page|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=September 18|publisher=WorldNetDaily|year=16 Sept 2004|work=TESTING THE FAITH|language=English] 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, [ [http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum.htm Ali Sina's Forum] ] and he claims to publish the resulting debates to allow for his readership to judge the success or failure of the challenge. [ [http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates.htm Ali Sina's debates] ]

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. [ [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/saudiarabia/SA-F.html websites banned in Saudi Arabia] ] Khalid Zaheer, a former student of Ghamidi, had earlier reported that he was unable to access faithfreedom.org in Pakistan.http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/Ghamidip6.htm] 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, [ [http://www.pir.org/AboutPIR/AboutPIR.aspx] ] [ [http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=faithfreedom&tld=org Whois.Net ] ] and Alexa.com [ [http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=faithfreedom.org&url=faithfreedom.org faithfreedom.org - Site Information from Alexa ] ] state that FFI website is Bellevue, Washington, USA..

Traffic rankings

The Traffic ranking for Faith Freedom International has fluctuated since its inception in June 2001. [http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.faithfreedom.org Alexa.com: Ratings for FaithFreedom.org] ] 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. [ [http://scripts.ranking.com/data/report_domain.aspx Faith Freedom at ranking.com] ] 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.cite web | title = Faith Freedom International | work =Site Summary | publisher =Site Meter | date =2005-07-14 | url =http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm7freefree ]

WikiIslam

In September 2006, Faith Freedom International launched [On Monday Sept 4, 2006, [http://www.wikiislam.com/wiki/WikiIslam:About#History (WikiIslam) was opened to the public.] ] WikiIslam, a community-edited wiki collecting negative and critical material about Islam. [http://www.springerlink.com/content/p02g0g86387j4t62/ "Cyber-Islamophobia? The case of WikiIslam"] , Journal: "Contemporary Islam", publisher "Springer Netherlands", ISSN 1872-0218 (Print) 1872-0226] According to the FAQ section on the website, "the main difference between WikiIslam and Wikipedia 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. ["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)." ibid.] 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." Göran Larsson adds that " [m] y impression is that the stories reported by WikiIslam have merely been selected to show that Muslims are ignorant, backward or even stupid." [Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, p. 5, Runnymede Trust (1997).] 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 the columnist Spengler in the Asia Times, Ali Sina believes that Islam is not a religion but a political movement. [ [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH10Aa01.html Asia Times: Islam: Religion or political ideology? August 10, 2004] ]

ee also

*Criticism of Islam
*Apostasy in Islam
*List of former Muslims
*Internet censorship in Pakistan

References

External links

* [http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php Faith Freedom New stuff] -Official Home page
* [http://www.faithfreedom.org/ Faith Freedom International] - Archived home page
* [http://www.wikiislam.com/wiki/Main_Page WikiIslam] home page
* [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1213794275742&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Muslim Mindset: 'The hatred is in Muhammad himself'] - Jerusalem post Interviews Ali Sina.
* [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH10Aa01.html Islam: Religion or political ideology?] - Asia Times