Barsomyat.com Wrap-Up
Yesterday I posted an article that I wrote for the New York Sun about a radical Islamic website,
www.barsomyat.com. The website featured pictures and information about Christians who were particularly active in debating against Muslims on the internet chat service PalTalk. Barsomyat also included a number of explicit threats to the people it targeted.
A number of prominent blogs, including Michelle Malkin and Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch, picked up the story early in the day. Jihad Watch readers organized a campaign to e-mail the web hosting company to which barsomyat.com was registered, Minnesota-based VizaWeb Inc. As I suspected, it seems that VizaWeb was unaware of what was going on over at Barsomyat, and the radical website was shut down before 1:00 p.m. One of the owners of VizaWeb, Rick Mueller, stated, "We started hearing about this [Monday]. We took the site off-line as we look into the content. If what we are hearing is true, we will not put it back up. . . . We obviously do not support its content." It seems that Internet Haganah played a key role in getting the website pulled.
Today, NorthJersey.com reports that
the FBI is investigating barsomyat.com. FBI spokesman John Conway stated, "
We are aware of that site, and we are looking at it. It's an interesting site to say the least." Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio chimed in with a relevant point in terms of possible connections between barsomyat.com and the Armanious murders. He stated that the key factor is determining when information about the Armanious family was posted: "If it was posted after the homicide, that makes the whole issue somewhat moot. But if it was posted prior to the homicide it would give it some more credence."
Several Muslim leaders in New Jersey denounced barsomyat.com when they were told about it. Mohamed El Filali, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, stated, "It is very sick. Nobody should be harmed because of a person's opinion."
Getting barsomyat.com pulled is a victory.
After all, some people who were apparently targeted by barsomyat.com have in the past attempted to close the site. However, very little would prevent the extremists who ran barsomyat.com from reconstituting it -- perhaps based in a country where the authorities are more enthusiastic about the extension of Islamic notions of blasphemy and apostasy laws into the West, and are unsympathetic to the idea that Christians' rights are being trampled upon. We must remain vigilant to attempts to use brute force and intimidation to trample upon free speech and free debate over religion.