Followers of all religions openly and passionately debate their views in numerous online forums, from chat rooms to e-zines. Despite heated differences that can become even more exaggerated online by anonymous voices, there is still a general consensus that people have the right to freely articulate themselves online. Some countries do monitor their citizens online, and censorship of certain websites is also more common than many would expect.
However, few would expect that private individuals and groups would deploy various censorship tactics against their ideological opponents. In 2004 Muslim hacktivists hijacked the socially and politically progressive MWU! (Muslim Wake Up) website, changed their logo to Murtad (Heretic) Wake Up, deleted much of their site content, and even made death threats against the site's owners and well-known writers. But despite the e-violence the website was able to recover its content and restore the site without permanent damage.
Yet, in 2008 the site crashed again and when it was restored it lacked much of its previous content. By 2009 the site was out of commission and the loss of access to its archives is arguably the greatest blow to the diversity of alternative Muslim perspectives online in the 21st century. MWU! was an international networking and publishing hub for journalists, activists, literati, musicians, intellectuals, teachers, and cultural commentators that represented a wide range of views on issues that other Muslim websites and e-zines would not even touch. MWU! had a Hug-a-Jew campaign to promote peace, was open to the LGBT Muslims, and was renowned for its women contributors--especially Mohja Kahf's series called 'Sex and the Umma' on sexuality in Muslim women's lives.
With the vast e-vaccuum left in MWU!'s wake, it is even more disturbing that censorship is now being deployed at the corporate level by the moderate and fairly open (though not the liberal and progressive hub that was MWU!) IslamOnline.net website based out of Qatar. Islam Online's employees in Egypt have since gone on strike. There are reports that the website's board may be in the process of deleting content by journalists from various countries who represent views not in-line with the board's perspectives. Also, check out the following report about the Islam Online situation (here).
These bleak prospects for alternative Muslim news media undermines the freedom of information platform that the internet is supposed to embody and iconically represent.
There will always be haters, radicals and conservatives that are not open to change(probably even scared of it because it would destroy their believes). It's a sad fact that they don't want to accept changing of all things through time, even what was once a fundamental truth these days can be viewed from a different perspective.
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