Joint Statement From Salafi Mosques and Centres Regarding Online Content Use, Dissemination and Copyright Issues

[Spubs.Com]

An Illustration of One of the Main Reasons Behind the Above Statements A few months ago the statements above were issued and there were many important reasons behind them. The intent was not, as some may have wrongly understood, to limit the spread of goodness. Rather, there were some very good and important reasons. Publishing has become very easy which means that it can be done recklessly when it is engaged in by people who are not qualified and not grounded in knowledge and who do not keep ties with the people of knowledge. We receive repeated complaints and concerns about certain websites (or networks) which are built upon systematic copying and reproduction of content from sites and authors, some of which the owners of such networks consider to be "loosely" Salafi. These platforms then became alternative sources of information, competing with the very websites where the original content was plagiarised from. One of the many consequence of this is creating confusion. The picture below illustrates one of the main concerns that were behind the copyright policy statement published above. The author of the article is Naveed Ayaaz of Madeenah.Con. For many years the issue of Madeenah.Con has been apparent and clear and the individuals behind it have been spoken against with evidences. Their tamyee'ee manhaj on the one hand (towards the hizbees and the disparaged) and haddaadi manhaj on the other (towards Salafis) has been illustrated with clear evidences. The affair of this group has been known from 2007-2008 at least. Thus, it is not befitting that these people or their translations are promoted under the label of the "Salaf" when these people are far removed from the manhaj of the Salaf in numerous areas. This causes confusion amongst the people. We reiterate once more the importance of the above policy statement in that we do not want our content or content which is produced by Salafis, their mosques or institutions to be utilized in this way: To build competing platforms with the clear intent of diverting audiences away from the original source websites to dubious, confusing platforms where the objective is to gather everything and anything without any insight and without respecting the rights of others and without knowledge, awareness or even concern for important manhaj issues that are taking place and which impact the da'wah, thereby leading to the spread of confusion.