Am I Sinful for Keeping a Server Where Users Engage in Backbiting and Other Sins?


Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch

Question

Am I sinful for keeping a server where users engage in backbiting, swearing, and insulting religion? I didn’t delete it to avoid conflict or bullying about Islam.

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

Your making of the server and allowing people to use it is not a sin. If people, thereafter, begin to use your server to engage in sinful activity, you are not entirely accountable for this – as this is considered indirect assistance in sin. [Ali Qari, Risalat al-I‘ana ‘ala al-Ma‘siya]

Indirect assistance in sin is prohibitively disliked, if reasonably avoidable.

Allah (Most High) says, “…Cooperate with one another in goodness and righteousness, and do not cooperate in sin and transgression. And be mindful of Allah. Surely Allah is severe in punishment.” [Quran, 5:2]

Advice

If you are able to intervene and stop this sinful activity being carried out via your server, it is in your best interest to do so. How you go about this is your discretion.

You may shut down the server. You may advise most wisely and tactfully, calling them to uphold a certain ethos. Or you may do anything that you feel will achieve the desired goal. If keeping the server live is more conducive to calling them to Allah and following of the Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), then that is the best case scenario.

Hope this helps
Allah knows best
[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Abdul-Rahim Reasat 

Shaykh Yusuf Weltch teaches Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he completed four years at the Darul Uloom Seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences.

He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he studied for three years in Dar al-Mustafa under some of the most outstanding scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib.

In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Quran and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Quranic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.