While it doesn’t happen often to the point where it’s in the news everyday, WordPress.com has removed a particular blog as it violated their terms of service. On December 30th, 2010 WordPress.com archived/suspended the site bootislam.wordpress.com for the posting of hateful material such as directions on how to properly shoot a Muslim, false bomb threats, and burning mosques. When The Council on American-Islamic Relations found out about the site they called on American Muslims and people of conscience to contact WordPress.com along with them to try and get the site removed. While the site is now offline, CAIR has also submitted the sites content to the FBI for further investigation.
I’m happy to see that no one has raised their voices to bring up the issue of freedom of speech because the Terms Of Service of WordPress.com specifically outlines what you can and can not do if you choose to use the service. While this hateful blog needed to be taken offline, it serves as a reminder that WordPress.com takes their TOS seriously and that your site may also be taken offline if the TOS is violated. If you use WordPress.com, please take a moment to read over their TOS to make sure you’re not in violation.
Right thing to do! Kudos!
I wouldn’t have thought that was an issue for their TOS anyway since (I assume) that teaching people how to kill others is illegal and therefore they wouldn’t be allowed to knowingly host it on their site anyway.
um, wordpress.com deletes blogs for violating its terms of service every day. It’s really not an unusual occurrence.
Sometimes I wonder how much hate speech on wordpress.com sails under the radar simply because it’s not in English and/or it doesn’t get enough casual readers to prompt complaints. I suppose there’s nothing that can be done about that, though.
Funny how the anti-Christian sites remain intact though.
Yep. If WP.com is allowing those to stay up, I’ll drop them
and tell the wwworld why. I won’t sell my soul for
convenience.
How many anti-Christian sites that teach Muslims (or atheists or anyone else) how to kill Christians or how to blow up churches have you seen? Of those, how many have you personally reported to WordPress, only to see WordPress do absolutely nothing?
It’s one thing to be “anti-” something. But there are levels of “anti,” and what is described in this post clearly crosses a line that any reasonable person should be easily able to discern.
If you know of an anti-Christian site that treats Christians the way the removed site apparently treated Muslims, please provide a link: I’d be glad to join you in reporting it for deletion.
So, how many blogs on wordpress.com have been removed
because of violation because of the TOS that noone else heard
about? Why mention on against islam? Don’t brown nose for them. How
many religions do you know preach about peace in one country while
using kids to blow themselves up in another country and blame the
United States for their own problems? The reason why you hear the
muslims cry that the US soldiers are killing their children is
because the muslims are using the kids to do their
fighting.
I figured it wouldn’t take long before someone like Stroneberger and Kilroy posted. Seriously, it’s time to get over this idea that Christians are being discriminated against in the U.S. 76% of the people here identify and Christian (as do I). But lots of “religious people” claiming to be Christian do create an environment where people are turned off to Christianity, but as Patrick noted, show us the ones advocating that Christians be killed and their churches bombed.
Been to Iraq and Afghanistan, and yes Stroneberger, whether you like it or not innocent children (INNOCENT) are being killed in raids and bomb attacks. We preach about peace. Claim Christ was the King of Peace, and set about to take over another country (Iraq) to feed someone’s ego. Point is, we in this country live in a glass house. Careful about stones.
All religions preach about peace, yet most of the wars in human history were directly caused by religion. Starting with the crusades, a thousand years ago 😉
Removing the offending Web site was, without doubt, the right thing to do. What I don’t understand is why so much fuss about it?
I knew someone would bring up the Crusades. I’m shock no one has mentioned McVeigh. Usually when you dare to impeach the good name of Islam, you usually hear about the Crusades and McVeigh. Cause, you know, something that happened, Gosh, a gazillion years ago and one lone nut out of billions is EXACTLY the same as daily suicide bombings against civilian women and children. Yup, yup.
…and yet during the course of the 20th century alone, the communists (who BTW weren’t good church-going christians, but from the *other* side of the fence) managed to kill off around 100 million innocents during their collective tenures…what a great advertisement for unbelief.
any website preaching hate should be removed, *whoever* it is aimed against.
love your consistency, wordpress.
Most of those people could not affirm full faith in even the Nicene Creed which is a fundamental requirement to actually be a Christian. It is required of all Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants. It is “de fide” for all Christian denominations.
In actuality, the number of Americans whose faith qualifies as a bona fide Christian religious faith of any denomination is around 11% of the US population. The majority reject core articles of faith which are not disputed by any major denomination (thus can be considered “universal articles of faith.”)
You must have the UN Security Council confused with the Papacy because we invaded Iraq for violating UN dictates, not under religious authority.
Simply I will ask you one question
How did you know that?
if your answer convinced me I would change my religion now.
Don’t repeat things you don’t know about please, You are living there in you home and know nothing about what’s happening here.
And don’t tell me that you watch it in news please, cause every one know what exactly NEWS is.
you may ask Rachel Corrie and she will tell you how did she die and why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie
Yes, WP did the correct thing.
“Freedom of speech”? There is no freedom of speech in relation to businesses or any other entity that is not the government. The constitution clearly states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
People often complain that this or that abridges their freedom of speech. Well, actually almost everyone can abridge someone else’s freedom of speech, but the constitution clearly states ONLY the government can not abridge someone’s freedom of speech.
Therefore, WordPress.com is clearly able to kick off anyone it chooses, so long as it does not conflict with its agreement between its users and itself (therein lies the problem — a “contract” is agreed to between the user and WP when someone registers and so long as that contract is not abused, WP has every right to do what it pleases).
Folks: bottom line in the USA, you only have freedom of speech in relation to the government, but not anything else.
You’re wrong. Freedom of speech applies to everything, not just in relation to the government.
You’re right about WordPress though, in that private companies can censor whatever they want. Which goes back to that whole “freedom of the press belongs to those who own one” thing.
However. WordPress makes a big show out of being supporters of the First Amendment, so they ought to hew a little more closely to it. This particular action, IMHO, is over-reach on their part.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I am a journalism student that just finished a Media Law class.
The moral of the story is that if you want to be a bigoted asshole on the Internet, you need a VPS at least.
That’s why you get your own domain name and host your own site. Islam teaches and encourages violence openly, yet no one dares to speak against it. Calling openly for killing of infidels, for smiting the throats of those who refuse Allah in many Surahs, but I suppose that’s an acceptable standard.
“Slay them wherever you can find them. Idolatry is worse than killing. Make war on them until idolatry is no more and God’s religion reigns supreme.” (Surah 2:190-)
Angie, it’s not that “no one” dares speak about what Islam teaches or doesn’t teach.
In this particular situation, that isn’t the issue.
At all.
When you host a site on WordPress.com’s servers, you AGREE to do things WordPress’s way. This site apparently failed to meet that agreement.
So it was removed.
End of story.
Everything you said about Islam is true. You even left out a number of verses, such as where the Koran refers to Jews and Christians as apes and pigs.
That still doesn’t justify advocating the murder of individual Muslims who have not taken up arms against you.
The people aren’t the religion anymore than one should have confused the millions of people in the Warsaw Pact with vaguely Communist sentiments with Communism itself as an ideology to destroy.
Can I ask you just one question
How did you translate this Surah?
Dear Angie
Thats the right translation
“Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.
And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.”
I would say nothing after Allah words
read it again
and compare it with what you said
and please notice that word “those who fight you but do not transgress”
That is Islam Angie
Allah orders us to fight only those who fight us and don’t ever transgress
so we shouldn’t fight those who don’t do anything to us
but we should defend our countries like Iraq and Afghanistan from US soldiers who just came to kill us
please again
i will reply what i said in my last comment
don’t just follow the news guys
and don’t get wrong translations
here is a correct version of Quran that you can read the right translation in
http://tanzil.net/#2:190
its the same Surah you wrote
and please tell me what do you think
two last things
1- we only fight to defend our lands “and those who make anything are not muslims”
2- read my last comment please http://weblogtoolscollection.c.....nt-1356162
Im waitng for you answer
Kilroy, Keith and Angie are right.
I will ask muslimpress.com to remove ALL hateful blogs against religions, including Christians of course.
Blogs on WordPress.com are allowed to have an opinion. They’re not allowed to incite or encourage violence. I’m quite sure that WordPress.com would also remove anti-Christian or anti-Semitic blogs that crossed a line (and they probably already have, multiple times).
Feel free to keep searching the internet for posts about Muslims and then posting knee-jerk comments, though. It immediately lets everyone know they’re dealing with a moron.
I am confused with wordpress.com TOS.
This post tells that racial or against any religions blogs are removed.
Yet blogs which contains illegal links to cracked files which are copyrighted are still up..
So what are the difference, those are against TOS in my opinion?
So how many of those sites have you reported to WordPress.com, only to see nothing done about THEM?
Could you share some WordPress.com links of such sites? I’m sure they’d be more than happy to look into it.
Patrick,
Of course i reported it. What i have got was only an email saying thanks for helping bla bla..
I even bookmarked the blog to see what wordpress.com would really do, apparently nothing 🙂
The site:
range2h.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/how-to-get-camtasia-studio-7-for-free-w-code/
Looks like a warez blog to me.
Well, wordpress believe all software should be free anyway, so why would they be in a hurry to take that down? If it bothers you, contact the owners of the software and get them to take it up with wordpress.
we appreciate this step
thanks from Pakistan
There is a difference between honest critism and malicious
attacks. The site was telling people to kill and bomb muslims which
is illegal. As for the anti-christian sites, the ones I know offer
honest critism by atheist and I dont know any site that teaches how
to bomb christians. There might be an anti-christian site written
by a an islamist out there, but if the writer start preaching
violence am sure wordpress.com would take it down ASAP.
I am glad that WordPress removed the blog. As an American I
feel that type of speech is extremely dangerous and is
illegal.
How lovely. The people who scream for censorship the most
against anything which upsets their delicate fee-fees are the very
ones trashing WP for deep-sixing this hate site. First off, if the
site had simply kept to simply bashing Muslims rather than calling
for their mass murder, then they probably would still be running.
Secondly, I know of few “anti-Christian” sites that actually call
for Christians to be slaughtered or killed, or collectively blames
them for all the social ills of society. If there were some, then
they would deserve the same treatment as this site. And third: last
time I checked, WordPress.com was a free service that they offer on
their own. As such, they have the right to determine based on their
TOS whether a blog under their jurisdiction is sticking to their
TOS standards, and they reserve the right to boot any blog that
violates those standards. In other words: their forum, their rules;
and if you violate them, you shouldn’t moan about being kicked off
their platform. Don’t like it?? Save your pennies and buy your own
domain and set up a hosted account. Just because WordPress.com is
free doesn’t mean that they have to accept hatemongering from
anyone. They did the right move here. For the record, I’m NOT a
Muslim (in fact, I’m more of an secularist who tends to distrust
most organized religion), but hate speech against any group is
simply not acceptable. Anthony
Hate and hate speech are protected (as long as there is no
clear and present danger to others) constitutional rights. Acting
on those feelings may be illegal depending on other factors.
Turning regular citizens (The WordPressians) into big brother watch
dogs results in anarchy, not in a more perfect world. It is far
better to have vocal idiots in the stream of discourse than to have
them enact their delusions in clandestine operations that are made
public only when their devastating results become known. Men prefer
to know who their detractors and enemies are. Lesser individuals
applaud this sort of faux resolution. Stifling the unpopular never
moves mankind, society nor the Internet forward. This action will
have no affect except to gratify the narrow minded among us WP
users. At one time it was blasphemy (death) to even talk of
personal freedom, liberty and free speech in the entire world. Some
unpopular (illegal) speech went a long way a couple centuries ago
in remedying that void. Good thing the WordPressians weren’t around
then. It is contradictory to the mission of WordPress–to
facilitate conversation, discourse, writing and the exchange of
ideas on the Internet through blogging to shut down the unpopular
because it is currently politically incorrect or some people are as
vehemently opposed to or as uncomfortable with the hate as the
haters are devoted to their thoughts. Moral: it is okay to blog as
long as the overseers agree… There is no support here for either
side of this unfortunate event. But, ask yourself: what if that
which you write on your blog upsets others–connected others,
should your blog be banned/shut down? The King of England was
shutdown/cutoff more than two centuries ago; now he rises from the
dead. The American Experiment is almost dead from the fools on the
hill. And, here’s another nail in the coffin. No praise for the
WordOppressians.
There is a difference between somebody bashing X and somebody saying that you should go out and murder anybody who believes in X.
The Koran says point blank to kill Jews and Christians, and that has never been abrogated (in case anyone would try to claim the Bible tells such things today to Christians and Jews). By the rule of “saying that you should go out and murder”, the Koran should be censored, if not banned.
the quran doesnt say that – try reading the book instead of getting your info from fox news.
Quran never say that
please read my comment here
http://weblogtoolscollection.c.....nt-1356291
That’s still protected speech though. The only time it’s not protected speech under the First Amendment (and I’m using that because WordPress is based in the U.S.) is when someone is directly inciting violence, and that incitement creates a clear and present danger.
I read that blog when I read the Council of American-Islamic Relations Facebook post about it, and yeah, the blog was racist, bigoted, and abhorrent, but I don’t think it even rose to the level of violating WordPress’s T.O.S.
The thing that people are pointing to the most, the post about how to “properly kill a Muslim”, was not actually “instructing people to kill Muslims”. It was a dumb joke about bacon grease sending Muslims straight to Hell.
The entire blog was more dumb and sophomoric than it was “hateful”, and I agree with the OP in this thread- more speech is the answer. We’re better of tolerating a few idiots than trying to shut people down.
i think most of u dont know Islam, u just heard about it, anyway i just wanna tell u that Islam ruled middle east for 1000 years and christians didn’t suffer, even more christians in iraq were living normally until the us war on iraq… read, and get informed and dont hate just because of religion differentially
good job wordpress, definitely the right thing to do. disagreeing is one thing, but hate speech just isn’t acceptable.
Good job, WordPress! Inciting violence is never acceptable and a violation of human rights (not to mention morality); and as a Christian, I’m a little tired of fellow “Christians” talking about “anti-Christian” fervor. It doesn’t even compare to the Islamophobia in this country.
Great job, WordPress; thank you.
Or perceived Islamophobia. Is that a word or a political statement?
“Freedom of speech”? There is no freedom of speech in relation to businesses or any other entity that is not the government. The constitution clearly states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I hereby declare Otto the winner of this debate. 🙂