t the same time, I, being happy in my new found faith, I was of course sharing this with those around me. In the first five weeks of publishing, I lost my editor and other associates who were appalled that I had become a Muslim. On top of that, I met with the same reactions from my closest friends and most quickly departed when I disclosed my conversion. From that point on I decided to stick to solitary life on the mountain and disclose this only on a need to know basis in the short run – I had more than enough battles on my hands. I was still trying to run the web company and with revenues not having fully recuperated by any means, I was bleeding it for every dime to keep JUS moving ahead. We were still doing some business with aerospace companies which concerned me, particularly as many of them were moving into military work as a result of the war. They knew nothing of the portal at that time but many were patriots who couldn’t help sharing their points of view and it was all I could do to hold my tongue on more than one occasion. I knew ultimately the web business, as it was then, would have to go to.

There were several things that developed that I didn’t anticipate and that proved to be concerning. First were the attacks by the Jewish vigilante groups. These groups contact the ISPs of Muslim sites and in particular those who tell the other side of the Palestinian issue and tell them that they are hosting sites that promote “terrorism”. It’s a clever and very illegal little scam. These groups are organized and even provide training to those who support them on what to say and how to say it. They are responsible for many of the closures of sites and boards. My web development company was the ISP so this gave us initially an added layer of protection however they eventually went to the company we bought bandwidth from and we were forced to move our servers. We made three more physical moves to alternate co-location facilities over the next year as the result of their shameful antics. Praise Allah for the techs who devised a method to move the servers and the DNS that resulted in our longest downtime being two hours. We moved off our own servers for a period of time and off shore but this proved problematic with language differences and in having to rely on hardware that was not fast enough or properly maintained. We eventually moved back to our owner servers with a renewed plan – the next ISP who tried to shut us down would get sued. I had had enough of this nonsense. We do not promote “terrorism”, we publish both sides of the news from primarily third party sources and we operate within the law. I no longer bow to their intimidation.

The second thing that took me by surprise was the credibility attacks from the existing Muslim press. This shocked me quite frankly as this went against everything I understood about Islam but also because we were carrying their news! As the new kid on the block, I had envisioned being able to add my skills and resources to the benefit of the Muslim press as a whole and in fact, offered partnership in some of our revenue plans to some. Muslim press is a small group and doesn’t begin to have the reach of those that publish propaganda against it. We need to operate as a collective unit to provide a framework for all of the voices we can get. It seemed like every few months the rumor mill would crank up over one thing or another and sometimes at critical junctures like when opened our video store in another effort to establish more revenue streams. As orders were streaming in another vicious rumor broke that left us with lots of orders that went unpaid. An axiom in the publishing business is that there is no such thing as “bad ink”. The rumors would kill our revenues for a few weeks but they fueled our hits and ultimately drove our readership higher. The same was true when we were written up by mainstream press – no matter what they said about us, good or bad, it drove more viewers to the site. That said, as a new Muslim, the attacks from Muslim press personally bothered me a lot.

The other thing I didn’t anticipate was the attitudes of many Muslims as a whole. Over the months we received many emails from Muslims who criticized the portal for one reason or another – from the spelling of Al-Qaida to using the color red. I hired many Muslims in a variety of positions who were concerned only about money and put out shoddy work. Many made commitments that they then failed to keep. It didn’t matter what we did we were criticized. Some of this you can expect when dealing with the public but this was past that. We were getting thanks from the non-Muslims and getting nitpicked from the very audience we were trying to represent. This was a sad surprise.

Late in 2002, the Jewish vigilante groups struck with a vengeance. Through a stupid error on our part, we had a portfolio gallery showing off some of our client work on our web company’s website and after putting two and two together, they managed to access some of our client list. They of course went after the aerospace companies and I was forced to sell of my aerospace application at a significant loss and eventually I had shut down the company entirely in order to protect my clients.

I expected it would be tough, I have weathered more storms in my life than I can count and I know that anything worth going for ultimately takes staying power and I have a proven quantity of that. I expected the flack from the patriots and I can even understand the motives of the Jewish vigilante groups although I am appalled that they get away with this kind of stuff. But what I could not understand was the lack of support from the Muslims. They were reading us but not supporting us. Out of some 9 million Muslims in North America, I came up front with everything I had to give the Muslims a credible voice, initially as a Christian who had compassion for them as human beings and ultimately as their sister, having embraced the same beliefs, and I could not reconcile their behavior. I could not understand how people who prayed five times a day, who were obeying Gods laws, who were the custodians of God’s bounty and the leaders of mankind, could act toward a fellow Muslim in this manner. And therein lies where I made my mistake.