www.islam-watch.org

Dear readers and well-wishers,
We inform you of the horrible experience that we suffered from our website host, Ohio-based IX Web Hosting, causing the latest disruption of islam-watch.org, a leading ex-Muslims-run website for the critical scrutiny of Islam.

We transferred the site to this host on October 1, 2008. While signing up with them, all their packages looked extremely attractive to me (not an expert): everything they offered unlimited for a very reasonable price.

However, it did not take long to be at the receiving end of the attractive goody they offered. First problem started when I had some higher traffic one day (~3 times that of normal, ~12,000 unique visitors). That caused overloading their server already and they shut us out for a couple of days.

Second time, there was another overloading, because of overloading from spamming when I was away traveling and could not take care of it. They should have a mechanism to shut out such spammers; instead, they shut the site for a couple of days and restored it after I cleaned up the spasms.

Overloading again for a third time, the latest, for a reason, which looked exactly normal, according to our web-expert; there's nothing unusual. While they shut down the site, they also closed our access to the database, preventing us from looking into, and resolving, the issue.

And then suddenly they cancelled our account, deleting everything, giving us no notice or warning. They denied us a back-up for the contents. Of course, they would not refund us either for remaining the 1.3 years of 2.0 year contract we signed with them. Because, we have overloaded with server three times, none out of our intentional fault or mistake.

Most of all, at the very first time of overloading, we wanted to move the site elsewhere; and when asked for refund of the money paid, they allowed some extra privilege, whatever that may mean. They would not return the moeny, whatsoever. And now we here with this devastating situation.

It was going to be devastating for us that we did not save anything locally of the entire content loaded to the site since we hosted with them nine months ago. We invested tremendous amount of effort in uploading 700–800 articles and other contents during this period, as well as thousands of hours spent in their meticulous editing.

Nonetheless, it is our sheer luck that ~15-30 min before they suspended our site, I had given my computer a command to download the whole site. Despite they suspended and deleted the content, as they claimed, my computer was able to download the content for at least three hours after the suspension, allowing us to download 60% of the content---also thanks to very good speed of the internet connection. The new site that we launched on June 1, and its contents were completely unloadable. This, however, means that they lied to us: otherwise how could my computer continue downloading the contents at least three more ours after they told me everything was gone. This also raises suspicion that the issue was something more than overloading. They couldn't just delete everything on that excuse. It's criminal to 'annihilate an website out of existence' for whose hosting we have paid for another 1.3 years.

We believe our experience will make those, contemplating or hosting their sites with this company, more cautious not to suffer the same fate.

We feel that "islam-watch.org" has been playing a critical intellectual battle against radical Islamists. Its annihilation would have been a great loss in this seminal battle of our time. We would not let that happen and we promise to come back from whatever set-backs we suffer.

And thanks for your patience during this interruption.

Comments (23)

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Translation of your books
written by Hope , July 01, 2009

MAK,

Hope that you translate your book into other languages and place a copy of it here.

Sorry state of affairs...????...!!!
written by Lennard James , July 01, 2009

I was so disturbed about this blackout and concerned also that we are never free to whatever to plan to.....??? I am really grateful to Mr. Khan and his good associates and of course to Dan as well for all their countless loving efforts to bring IW online!

I hope that there is lesson learnt from this and hope that we collectively have to make great strides in spreading such knowledge and partake in giving a hand to wake/jolt those that are not aware of their foolish upbringings....!

IW and countless other such websites have really put nails in their thoughts and hurt their egos...

Our first steps are a giant leap of faith jolts in mankind's pompous beliefs....

so break these chains the bound the feeble mind.....

re: Translation of your books
written by MA Khan , July 01, 2009

MAK,
Hope that you translate your book into other languages and place a copy of it here.

Thanks hope. The book is currently being translated in Indonesian, Bengali, Tamil, Assamese and also probably Urdu. Once complete, we will try to make it available as widely as possible.

I wil let people know
written by ei , July 02, 2009

I will let the web programmers know that they should not host their websites on ix web hosting for what they did.

More than meets the eye
written by ei , July 02, 2009

Could it be that they did it because there was some muslim pressure?

outrageous
written by flippinheck , July 02, 2009

You can't trust anyone these days to stand firm and help the truth from spreading further. Even Webhosting services. Lucky you were able to salvage something out of this.

Seeing as I particularly value the insights from the contributors on your site and consider them to be very valuable, I can only say that I was immensely outraged by what happened. So keep up the good work.

Besides, isn't this a clear breach of contract, for which you can sue their pants off ???

Thank you Mr. Khan
written by Openmind , July 02, 2009

Hats off to Mr. Khan and his team for fiixing the problem and helping us to stay connected with islam-watch, its turning out to be my favorite website these days personally. It has helped me dispel a lot of myths about islam and has helped me in understanding the reasons behind turning sane people in radical, blood thirsty fanatics.... and also it has helped me in my conversations (arguments) with muslims abt islam.

Thank you Mr. Khan.

Are there any attorneys in the readers
written by Ram K. , July 02, 2009

I'm wondering if there are attorneys in the web site readers community who can help Mr. Khan sue the hosting company. A law suit on the company will go a long way in preventing these kind of things in the future.

Suing IXwebhosting
written by MA Khan , July 02, 2009

I think these companies are smart enough to know that one will go to court over $100-200.

See below another message from the owner of another brilliant Islam-critic website to realise how difficult has it become to continue this struggle:

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that due to Nominet’s total submission to Islamonazism I no longer own the domain name www.prophetmohammed.co.uk. Unfortunately, Nominet would not believe that I really am Prophet Mohammed (PBUM) residing at 72 Virgin Avenue, Paradise and insisted that I gave them ‘correct’ contact details.

The good news is that the new home of Allah’s favourite website can now be found at www.prophet-muhammad.biz.

Obviously it is essential that you change any reciprocal links on your site/blog from www.prophetmohammed.co.uk to www.prophet-muhammad.biz. It is extremely important that you do this for the following reasons:

1. Google rankings are greatly influenced by incoming links. i.e. The more links to a website, the higher its potential ranking.

2. Visitors to your site will no longer be able to view Allah’s favourite website if you keep your current link.

3. If you leave the current link you will be linking to a pro-IslamoNazi website…your link would actually help their Google ranking and undo all the good work done by merciful Mo (PBUM).

Before the current problems with Nominet, Allah’s favourite website achieved a top 3 ranking on Google searches and often appeared in the number 2 slot. With your help it shouldn’t be too long before we’re back where we belong.

Since I created Allah’s favourite website the number of Muslims committing mass murder has actually decreased. This is proof that Mo’s message to naughty Muslims is actually working and, slowly but surely, Islam is dragging itself out of the Dark ages.

Allah has instructed me to guarantee you your a place in Heaven.as soon as the link has been changed.

Cheers,

Mo (Peace Be Upon Me)

PS Please pass this email on to anybody interested in freedom of speech

Insider Job
written by Liberty , July 02, 2009

I guess, the company might have hired one or more muslims in the company and they may have contacted there respective madrassa and have forced the owner with either intimidation or by paying a hefty bribe.
I guess all these website owners keep up the good work and always keep a 'backup' of all the contents.
Please translate your book in 'french', 'malay', 'hindi' and 'bangla' atleast.

Not malicious, just fraudulent
written by CobourgJohn , July 02, 2009

I operate but also host with my own company another site on atheists and I have some experience with hosting. There are a number of hosting companies that promise the world (e.g. everything unlimited) but it's impossible to deliver. Some of these are quite big and otherwise reputable. Their standard response to a busy site is to shut it down. 3000 visitors per day is busy - they want sites that have only 200 per day - they pay the same fee! And they often deny access for recovery of data - I think they are afraid of retribution.
I doubt they are censoring - I think you would have heard if they were.
And keep up the good work, you are one of my favourite sources.

...
written by Highlander , July 02, 2009

The abrupt manner in which Islam Watch was shut down by their former hosts on filmsy grounds suggests that they acted out of malice. I wont be surprised if they were pressurised into doing so.

The popularity of Islam Watch is growing by the day and they are many who will not too be happy with this development.

Be it articles on Islam, religion, atheism, politics, history, satire, IW is my favourite site on the web. It has enriched my thoughts and helped to shape my views on many issues.

Thanks to Dan Zaremba for restoring this site.

Thanks to MA Khan for his untiring efforts to share the info and also to all the contribrbuters for their thought provoking essays.

...
written by Dan Zaremba , July 02, 2009

Islam-watch is a busy site however any normal provider would at least give an opportunity to "upgrade" for a higher price.

LINK

The above stats are just from yesterday (enabled in the morning).

Let's hope that this will not become a common practice.

Malicious or not??
written by M A Khan , July 02, 2009

The responses I got from them is getting more intriguing as it sinks in. After they informed me everything was gone & irrecoverable, I got another email from their billing department (probably a misunderstanding between their departments) saying:

Suspension Reason:
You violated our terms of service. Please contact us for further details.
All your account's data and settings are preserved and access to it can be enabled anytime.
Warning: If you do not contact us within the next 30 days, your account can be permanently deleted. In this case all your data and settings will become unrecoverable.

I called them back after this email requesting them to restore the account briefly so that I can take my contents out. They said, they will look into it & following email I got later:

MA Khan,
For the protection and fairness of our other customers, we will not be reactivating your account. Your account overloaded your shared web server many times. As you can understand, due to the shared nature of our servers, this causes slowness and downtime for many customers. It is for this reason that we must ask that you please seek other hosting. We wish you all the best in your future.
Lauren,
CR Manager

This last letter clearly says that they lied to me when they told me a few days earlier that everything was gone: it's out of their control to recover it. Now they say, they still could activate the account, but they would not for this & that, even for a day allowing me recover the content. All I needed is access to the control panel without letting internet access to readers. It would no way harm their server. They just would not let me recover my content...
Whatever that may mean: malicious or not!!

And I had, after first overload, offered to upgrade to which they told me it was unnecessary.

...
written by kmgy , July 03, 2009

Is petrodollar at work in sudden cessation of Islamwatch.org from cyberspace without previous notice by the web server? Just asking.

kudos
written by malaysian , July 03, 2009

initially i was scared IW won't be coming back, but you guys had done a great job indeed.

MA Khan i do wish your book will be translated into malay and published in malaysia (if only it could escape censorship board), educating my fellow malaysians before they drop beyond the oblivion.

malice
written by John , July 03, 2009

This unfortunate event may not be purposeful malice.

As a server receives a request for files, it creates a queue of files to be downloaded that is separate from the files that are used for viewing the website.

Therefore, it is possible that the files of a website can be deleted and yet the files might continue to download.

I am glad to see this website back online. I hope you have better luck with your new host.

IX hosting nuking you
written by Anand Rajadhyaksha , July 03, 2009

Possibly they might have had some very persuasive reasons to do what they did. Reasons put to them in very persuasive ways by some very persuasive people. They might have had offers they could not refuse, a la the Godfather.

...
written by karl darwin ostpreussen , July 03, 2009

could the center for free inquiry host your website?

Welcome back from Muslim Beheading
written by Shiva Worshipper , July 03, 2009

For few days I was in a urgent need to vomit over Allah, thankfully Islam watch is back in time. If Allah looks smelly and dirty due to vomit, Muslims please don’t blame me, its your Allah who tried to push his poison of hate and intolerance down my throat, I am just throwing it out.

I think deleting this websites proves that Muslim hierarchy is scared of this web site and is going to any length to silence it. Muslims are sore losers, when they cannot win the debate, they behead the winner of debate, but only thing they can behead online is some data, which can be brought back to life, with a click of mouse. I think Allah never thought about this situation.

Conscious of Muslim hierarchy is caught in a dark chamber, which Allah created with temptation for unlimited dominance, power, lust and greed. Islam-watch is like a hole in roof of that chamber from which Sunlight reached that chamber, immediately Muslims in that chamber thought that Islam-watch is the Sun ( the Satan of fire, which Allah have warned then for ), they climbed the roof to behead the Satan of fire, but its going to back fire because attacking the hole in the roof with the sword, will make the hole even bigger and the Satan of Fire will look even bigger. Sun is beyond there reach and reach of their Allah, so keep on destroying the dark chamber of Allah from inside holy Muslims. It give more reason to ordinary Muslims to reach this web-site and look for themselves, what there masters want to destroy.

Lawyer Willing To Help
written by Andrew Stunich , July 04, 2009

Makes me wonder if some Muhammadanism influence is at work. I am a lawyer and I suggest that you scan the contract and all correspondence with the website as a pdf file and e-mail it to me. I specialize in contract law. I will look it all over, pro bono, and see if a lawsuit is recommended.

...
written by a guest , July 06, 2009

"hat caused overloading their server already and they shut us out for a couple of days."

When using a shared hosting provider you should be careful HOW you use resources. If you want to be spared future shutdown problems with the current host or future hosts stop using PHP and switch back to the plain old html files you were using previously. HTML files can be served night and day without much server overloading where as php and other stuff require a lot of server resources. Stop acting as if you owned the servers and start acting in ways that will not get you banned.

I care that islam-watch should remain alive a long long time. All the best.

...
written by Another Anonymous , July 06, 2009

Anonymous,

Islam Watch was accused of server overloading twice while running plain html site.

Of course php script ERRORS can cause problems - however Islam Watch had NO script errors whatsoever.

The idea of going back to html is like saying that swords are more reliable that missiles and clay tablets more reliable than PCs (technically speaking this is correct on both counts).