Chatrooms

The Devil has a new medium to ensnare Muslims: ISLAMIC internet chatrooms to get Muslim boys and girls talking about their wildest fantasies! And justify it by calling it "Islamic" so it seems Halaal!

• There is a specific chatroom called 'Islam' on the MIRC network. I used to be a VERY regular visitor and justified my nightly forays by telling myself that I was going to have Islamic discussions and that it was a 'Halaal' way to meet Muslim girls. I sat for hours and spoke to many Muslim girls of many ages.
• Most of the talk has nothing to do with Islam. Meeting a girl at the movies or in a chatroom is the same thing. Good Muslim youth are losing their "innocence" every night on these chat lines, their parents thinking that they are fast asleep. It is VERY ADDICTIVE, especially for people who don't mix with the opposite sex. Muslim girls (who have strict fathers) sit every night, making up for not being able to talk to boys.
• One night I asked the question: is this chatroom halaal or haraam? I was told things like: "Allah knows best ... not you!" and "Now you've had your fun you are acting holier than thou!" Its existence must be publicised so that parents know what their daughters and sons are up to when they disappear into the bedroom after supper. This is only ONE chatroom in SA (there are about 500 Muslim kids on a Friday/Saturday night!) ... I'm sure there are many more.
• There are yet other chatrooms, not Islamic, which utilize web cams. Chatters can see each other and numerous perverted men and women perform explicit acts of immorality for viewers. The issues spoken about do not even make a pretence of being decent.

A Concerned Brother

Danger Games

Let’s look at computer games. The overall attempt to pull people away from believing in God involves films, books and even PC games which make fun of God or condition the mind to there not being a God.
AFTERLIFE IS A popular, involving game which dabbles in beliefs concerning Heaven and Hell. These are some comments made by a reviewer: "I've no problem with the roads in Hell, it's the roads in Heaven that are too difficult."
REINCARNATION and recruiting "worshippers" are but some of the beliefs propagated in the storyline of such games.
Play heavily favors evil deities. In Black & White, 'gods' are created by peoples' prayers.
HOURS ARE SPENT by gamers. Games become a drug, numbing the heavy players’ minds.
Ideologies projected in some of these games are alien to belief in Allah Ta’ala. A Muslim cannot stomach them but will tolerate them in the guise of games played by their children. Amazing!
If nothing else, games such as these are another nail in the coffin carrying belief and faith in God to the grave for thousands of hapless souls. Don’t join the procession.

TV Talk: The Excuses we Make

Prevention is better than cure. This holds true for Islam’s view on TV - rather than go through all the harmful effects of TV SWITCH IT OFF.

BUT I WATCHED…
Many parents who watched TV saw gory horror programs but say they grew up normal.
The first difference is the amount of TV they watched and kids watch today.
The second difference is the type of content portrayed. Today’s content is more graphically presented with explicit scenes, a glorification of unethical, irreligious beliefs and the acceptance of abnormal behaviour as OK.

FOOD
Research shows that TV ads are doing a terrific job of increasing appetites for fatty foods.
In the US, children see 40,000 ads a year. Up to 70% are for junk food and the results are an unhealthy, obese generation of kids. (Time, Aug 9, 2004)
The volume of violent and other programs desensitises the viewer to these acts. Where he might have felt horror there is only an absence of feeling.

30-SECONDS
Why would a business executive spend millions on a 30-second TV ad for his business yet claim that the 30 minute long movie his children watch has no impact on them?
TV has tremendous influence due to the enormous amounts watched. How many children’s games are TV-influenced? How many a kid don’t you see imitating the actions of his TV hero? According to Eurostat, 54% of adult’s free time is spent watching TV in Hungary, 47% in UK, 46% in France and 33% in Germany. (Time, Aug 9, 2004)

DIRECT LINE
Iraq under the US has all the racy TV shows and Internet sites of "civilised" America and these are influencing behaviour. As a result, adultery, prostitution and rape are spiralling out of control in a country where it was practically unheard of previously.

HE-MAN
Seemingly innocent kid’s programs glorify anti-religious and anti-social behaviour. The Gummi Bears get their strength from a magical potion (magic is prohibited in Islam); He-Man averaged 40 violent scenes every half-hour episode; He-Man chants ‘By the power of Grayskull’ and defeats his enemies.
These ideas implant themselves in the child’s mind. Islamic teachings are not as attractively presented and not as many hours are devoted to them. To counter TV-ideas will be like giving poison and then attempting to erase its effects while continuing to give the poison. Does it make sense?

Another Anti-Islamic Site

Why sending an alert is the wrong thing to do

Alert letters keep coming: Beware here’s the latest anti-Islamic site. Then a URL so you can verify that it is as described. Then a request to tell all Muslims.
Sincere. Misguided. Counter-productive. Little do the senders realize they are actually helping the sites they are trying to fight. The Internet is a different medium and the rules that applied to previous media do not always apply here. If there is a bad book, you can tell others about it. Nobody will rush to buy it.
In the click-click world of the Internet, the first thing people do is to click on the URL, thus increasing hit counts and boosting the morale of the site owners. Second, it helps with search engine placement, as some will use the increased traffic as a sign of popularity. You just helped create the monster you wanted to fight! If you don't want people to visit a site, don't tell them about it.
It’s easy to setup a page on the Internet. It’s difficult to draw traffic to it. Any anti-Islamic site will die if it faces a frozen counter. That happens if you leave it alone. But if you tell everyone about it and ask them to do the same, you are volunteering as their publicity agent. For most sites the best is to let it die of neglect.
Next time you receive an alert about an anti-Islamic site, delete it. The best is to promote good Islamic sites. Let the good drive out the evil.

By: Khalid Baig Al-Balagh