|
Thank you for
your question. Before we begin let us remember some very important
points to keep in mind:
1.
As Muslims we cannot lie about anything, especially about our
religion. 2.
We can always prove what our religion teaches because we have
original recorded sources of our religion:
A) The Quran
B) Teachings of Muhammad.
This is a very unique part of Islam, not available in any other
ancient religions. 3.
Sometimes "questions" contain misinformation. We must
qualify what it is that someone is saying against what they are
implying.
4.
If you find the answer to your question makes you say, "I
didn't know that" or "This is good" are you ready
to worship your God by submitting your choices to His Will?
This what Islam is really all about.The
most important subject is the worship of Almighty God, without
any partners or associates or "gods" besides Almighty
God.
Bismillah
Rahman Raheem - Answer #03-09-11 3:45 PM
Thank
you for asking about these types of emails and this one (Dream
of Shaykh Ahmad) and for putting such confidence in our ability
to be able to provide answers.
Actually,
we have written on this subject a number of times. It is not permissable
according to Islam, to visit these sites, nor to mention them,
nor to forward emails about them. This is not the proper way to
handle the situation. In fact, this is exactly what the enemies
of Islam want us to do. In many cases they pretend to be Muslims
or friends of Islam who are supposedly "exposing" these
evil websites. To those who are not familiar with the way that
the search engines work on the internet, there would seem to be
no problem in visiting these sites. However, nothing could be
further from the truth. The more "hits" (visits) that
the site gets, the higher it is going to be rated by the search
engines and the higher position it will have on a search. This
will help increase the chances of these websites to come up in
a word search for "Islam."
Do
you doubt this?
O.K. Go to http://www.google.com/
and then type in the word "Islam"
and see how many total sites there are out there with the word
"Islam" in them. Today (Sept. 11, 2003) there are over
9,670,000 websites listed with Google.com and where do you think
the position of one of the worst (Answering Islam) is?
Today
it is on page 2.
For
three years it has been on page #1. It's position has changed
from 8 to 7 and then up to 6 and even 3rd.
Now,
how is it that the enemy of Islam can manage to stay on the page
one for over 3 years in the top ranking position? HOW?
Because
Muslims continually send out messages like the one that you just
sent and then they tell everyone to do the same thing.
And
it works - for the enemy.
They
know it will work and right now they want to get back up on the
first page.
Imagine
that out of 9,670,000 websites with the word "Islam"
- the deviants and misguided and enemies of Islam are sharing
the highest places.
Why?
Because
of Muslims promoting the wrong message.
The
number one position usually goes to Ibrahim Shafi at: http://www.islamworld.net/
(because he has the most links with the word "Islam")
The
number two (and sometimes number one) goes to: http://www.islamicity.com/
(because they have so many links to them from their other site
and others sites that link to them).
Number
three is usually their other site: http://www.islam.org/
(same reasons)
Then
number four is usually the Shiites or NOI (Nation of Islam under
Louis Farrakhan) [notice I DO NOT give the address]
Then
number five or six or seven is usually ANSWERING ISLAM - [no address
again]
Islam
is having another reason not to promote these sites. You see many
Muslims today do not really know a lot about Islam and they are
easily confused by these people who know how to mistranslate or
misrepresent the verses of the Quran and the hadeeth of the prophet,
peace be upon him. As a result I have a number of emails coming
to me from different countries wherein the youth are asking me
about things that have really messed them up, all of it stemming
from these teachings.
For
the above reasons you can see why it is haram to give out these
sites or to even visit them.
What
should we do?
Good
question:
First,
when you receive email talking about these sites -
DO NOT FORWARD IT TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST.
Second,
copy this letter and then send it back to everyone on the list
that comes with the email to let them know the ruling on this.
Third,
begin to visit and promote the websites that are dealing with
the real issues of being a Muslim in this place in these times.
This is critical.
|
