Tripod.com Deleted This  Site

This site was originally placed at Tripod.com. But without any notice it was deleted altogether. When I enquired what happened they sent me the following standard email. 

From:                 "abuse@tripod.com"
Reply-To:                 abuse@tripod.com
To:           Ali Sina afreethinker@hotmail.com
Subject:     Re: Cancellation of your account (KMM6970046C0KM)
Date:         Wed, 24 Jan 2001 13:04:26 -0800

Hello,  

The account that you brought to our attention was found to be in violation of our Terms of Service and will therefore not be reinstated to our servers.  Members agree to abide by the TOS when they initially register the account, and they are expected to maintain their sites within our rules. 

We generally do not "warn" members about their content given the substantial number of members,  and violating pages are rarely reinstated in fairness to the overall community.

The email did not mention what was the "violation". So I responded:

Dear Sir/ Madam

I did not violate your terms of agreement and I do not want to use your services any more. As an ethical humanist I would like to work with ethical people.  I am constantly receiving death threats by the Islamic goons who kill and destroy everything in their path inspired by the overgrown cult of Islam and the explicit mandates of their prophet Muhammad that told them to kill. I have withstood all forces of darkness and endured all sorts of insults but have pushed forward reason above blind faith and fanaticism. I am in the top of their hit list. There are people in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan who want to kill me. 

Notwithstanding, many freethinkers, human rights activists, intellectuals and writers have expressed their admiration and appreciation of my work. What I do for Islamic world is what Thomas Paine and Bertrand Russell did for Christianity, i.e. bring sense to the senselessness, substitute ignorance with reason and replace Hate with Love.  

You deleted my site not because I am an unethical person. I preach ethics. That is what my site was about. I am fighting to build an ethical society in a world dominated by religious hate and bigotry. You deleted my site because you caved under the pressure of the Islamic goons. You caved because you have no respect for human life and for truth. You caved because you fear being target of Islamic terrorism. In that case you should have expressed your concern with me before acting unilaterally like a coward. If you had read only one page of my articles you would have known my message is the message of love. 

You are an unethical company and I will certainly make a note of that in my site. I will let everyone know about your unethical conduct. This is not because of vengeance but because I know too well when free speech is curtailed the abuse will know no end. Let everyone know of your policies so no other intellectual or writer; become a victim of your lack of judgment and unethical conduct. 

Einstein said: it is a crime to stay silent in the face of evil. That is why I am speaking against Islam. But your crime is not because you kept silent. Your crime is because you allied yourself with evil.   

That site that I produced was my labor of love for humanity and for truth. Many people liked it, learned from it the true spiritual values, and were inspired to love humanity without the shackles of cults that preach nothing but hate. I don’t blame you to be afraid of the Muslims, (if that was the reason for deleting my site). They kill and they are serious. But if you had a grain of ethics, you would have talked to me before. What if I had lost my back up?

I should mention that for the reasons of security I prefer not to register a domain in my name where my address and other private information would become public. That is why I need a host that does not ask personal questions.

The good think that came out of this mess was The fact that I found many wonderful freethinking friends who came to the support of the Rational Thinking site and some of them protested to the Tripod.com for their unethical cancellation of my site. 

The following are some of the emails they wrote  

Dear Dr. Ali Sina;

I am so glad to receive your personal e-mail. In fact, I did not expect a reply from you at all. That is because many times I have written to some freethinkers but did never receive any reply. You have really proven how humble and amiable you are! I just wished that many free thinkers were like you.

Dr. Sina, please do not despair. We are with you. Just like you, a few of us have really risked our lives to expose the bitter truth about religions in general and Islam in particular. I am sending cc's of this e-mail to three of my close comrades who have dedicated themselves towards the mission that you have so passionately aimed to achieve. Our numbers may be small now, but every giant oak starts from a little seed. We have germinated that seed. All we need to do is to take care of the seedling so that it does not have a premature death.

History will remember you. I shall certainly write to coward Tripod.

I am eagerly awaiting to see your new site.

Best regards

A Kasem

Dear Sir;

Ref: KMM6970046COKM

It is a great pity that you have decided to cancel Dr. Ali Sina's 'Rational Thinking' web site. The only reason given by you is that Dr Sina has violated the terms and conditions of your services without specifying details.

Dr. Sina has valiantly fought Islamic terrorism and has dedicated himself to educate and enlighten the humanity of the danger of deadly fundamentalist rise in every part of the world. It seems to me that you yourself have become a victim of that terrorism. Your action is utterly cowardice and an insult to freethinking humanity. The cyber world will be a far better place without your presence. It may be better for you to seek businesses from the Islamic goons rather than from the civilized world. When I see that so many Islamic sites are spewing out poisons and hate day and night, I cannot but infer that you are playing in the hands of the Islamists.

I deplore your action and condemn your decision with the strongest language.

Dr. Ali Sina will be remembered by history when every one will forget you.

Best regards

A Kasem

Another friend wrote  

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to you in protest of the shutting down of the"Rational Thinking" website devoted to the advancement of rational thinking(the account number KMM6970046C0KM)http://rationalthinking.tripod.com/

At what point was this site found to be in violation of your Terms of Service, or was realized that its mandate was not being met? I am surprised, dismayed and outraged at this cancellation, and the fact that a few religious leaders can make the decision for ME, that I don't have the *right* to gain access to a site that encourages independent thinking, upholds reason as the sole measure of truth, promotes unity of humankind, equality between men and women, abolition of prejudices and freedom from dogmatism and blind faith.....I am hoping that you will not let any social nor political prejudice tarnish your judgement. It is NOT their place to make the decision to force you to close this site.

I therefore join others who have a keen interest in the outcome of this case, and I sincerely hope that every effort will be made to ensure that it is brought to a just and satisfactory conclusion by asking you to reverse your decision and to reinstate the following site:

http://rationalthinking.tripod.com/ .

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Ms. Simin H.

USA

Dear Sir:
      I came to know about Dr. Ali Sina's site being deleted by you without even informing him.  As a free thinker I believe this is illegal and best of all unthinkable in the 21st century.  Do you & your company still live in the dark ages?
      We strongly protest this arbitrary, unilateral action of yours. We would hope that better sense will prevail on you and you will reinstate Dr. Ali Sina's work. In the worst case, he having lost faith in your trustworthiness, you should return his work in CDs to him with an apology for misconduct and misjudgement  for your particular employees' actions.  We hope  you will behave like rational business men of 21st Century - and not 18th Century traders afraid of goons and bigots.
Thanking you in advance for a rational corporate behavior.
Best wishes,
Sandip K. Dasverma

censored site KMM6970046C0KM

Dear Sirs, 

In the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, I expect there are hundreds of millions of people around the world like me combing the web trying to make sense of it all.  No doubt thousands have recently stumbled on this banal example of gutless -- and ill-timed -- censorship. 

Shame on you.

There were many more friends who wrote to tripod to protest and lent their support, to all of whom I am greatly indebted and thankful. Despite all those letters of protest Tripod never said what was the point of violation that made them delete my site. Instead they sent the same standard email that they sent me to everyone else who wrote them for clarification and protest.  

The point was not that I wanted to reinstall my site with an unethical company like Tripod but to voice our disgust and express our outrage at their practice of censorship and their part in gagging the voice of reason, siding with evil and fighting against the truth. We have to expose unethical companies if we want to be free.  

Tripod has every right to cancel any free service that it is providing. So “legally” they did nothing wrong. But ethically their action is contemptible.

My site was not obviously a site promoting hate, containing obscene material or promoting violence. On the contrary; it was advocating for unity, equality, abandonment of prejudices and building an ethical culture. So I was not breaking any ethical, moral or social code.

The only reason that they deleted my site, which they did not say, is because they must have been pressured and/or threatened by Muslims. That is how Muslims control information. They kill the writers and destroy their thoughts. They stop at nothing to fight the truth. You all know the case of Salman Rushdie. You also recall that the translator of his book to Japanese was murdered. The booksellers in UK had to withdraw the book from their displays because they received bomb threats.

On the other hand Muslims are advancing by raping, killing and practicing slavery just as the Prophet used to do. While in the West they are increasing in numbers by deceit and propaganda.

How can you fight evil if your voice is gagged? These very American and Western companies that try to please the Muslims by breaking one of their own most fundamental principles, which is the freedom of speech are playing with fire. If the number of Muslims increases through the ignorance that they have been instrumental to spread, they would be the ones who would lose their liberty and freedom of speech.

If Muslims who are now so few in comparison to the rest of the population in the West can cause so much terror for a big company like Tripod/Lycos to delete an ethical site like mine that promoted nothing but love and brotherhood of mankind, imagine what kind of liberties we will have when Muslims grow in numbers.

I received an email from a very distressed mother who begged me to put back my site. She said her son was an “all American” nice kid who has converted to Islam and is now hating everyone and talking about Jihad.

When Einstein said that it is a crime to do nothing when faced by evil, he was talking about the advancement of Nazism. But now we are facing with the advancement of Islam that is far more dangerous than Nazism when you consider its long lasting effect. I invite all the freethinking and freedom lovers to be on guard and speak out when religious intolerance tries to gag the free speech and never allow darkness of ignorance win over the light of knowledge by force. 

Ali Sina

The pressure of the supporters of the Rational Thinking site finally worked and I received this email as a surprise.

Hello Ali, According to our records your account is ok.  If you are still not able to access one of your sites or files, please let us know and we will look into it further.  Please send us a few more details too.  Thank you. Thank you for using Tripod. Tripod Membership

Obviously this was not the same message I and others got before and my according to MY record my site was not ok. It was deleted and it wasn't there. How could it be ok when no one could open it? And again I received this message. 

From: membership@tripod.com

To: Ali Sina <afreethinker@hotmail.com>

Subject: Re: Add/Delete URL  (KMM6972465C0KM) >Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 13:23:39 -0800 

Hello Ali,

We have not deleted your site. We greatly apologize for not responding to your e-mail much sooner.  We have resolved some issues that were causing problems and/or confusion for some of our members.  Since it has been over two weeks since you wrote us this e-mail, by what many of our members are telling us, most of these problems are no longer an issue.  However, if you are still having the same problem, please let us know and we will look into it further.

Thank you for using Tripod.

Well, sure the flood of emails must have made them realize that they had done something wrong. But I wanted to get to the bottom of the problem and find out who were those members who had "some issues and/or confusions" with my site. So I wrote them.

Dear Tripod

Since your email leaves more questions than answers and since I am

Posting our communication in the BB of Iranian National Front and in my site, it is important that you respond to the following questions.

1. Who were those members who had problems/confusions with my site in the first place?

2. What were the problems that they raised?

3. How is it that they changed their mind and it is no more a problem?

4. Why I was kept in the dark so far about these things.

 Please understand that I come from a country that suppresses freedom of speech and know too well what it means. I know that if we do not stand strongly against this evil and do not oppose it with all our force it can have devastating results. We Iranians know too well what censorship and suppression of free thought means. This is not a joke for us. We shall defend the freedom of speech with our blood. We have seen the face of oppression and we are not going to allow that happen in this country. We will not sit quiet and let the Muslims hijack the liberties and the freedom in this country. We will not allow America to become another Philippines, Malaysia or Timor where Muslims started with “good speech” at first and now that their number is big are calling for Jihad or holy war. This strategy was practiced by the Prophet of Islam and is taught as the way to promote that cult. We will not let that happen. We will act as the custodians of freedom in this country and we will put to shame those businesses that suppress the freedom of speech to appease the Muslim goons. 

Your explanation in your email is not clear at all. Please do answer the above questions and tell us honestly exactly what happened.

 Yours truly,

Ali Sina

Finally I got the following email, which I could not make and sense of and did not explain anything.

Hello Ali,

We have over 7 million members in Tripod and many had problems with their sites.  There were different problems, and no, they did not change their mind.  What happened is that some of the problems were resolved by us, and some of the problems had to do with their hardware or software, and therefore those problems are not problems any more.

We do not keep members in the dark.  In fact, sometimes members detect a bug or problem before we do, and they let us know.  In the near future, we hope to have major problems posted either on the site, or somewhere else, so members are more aware of any problems and/or issues that may affect them.

Thank you for the feedback, and thank you for using Tripod.

Membership Services

Tripod.com - Part of the Lycos Network

Despite the above apology, the Rational Thinking site at Tripod.com remains un-operational  as anyone can see by clicking on it   http://rationalthinking.tripod.com

Another attempt to ban this site 

Read about another case of censorship l