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The attacks were seen as another example of "Islamophobia" on Second Life. |
CAIRO — Only a few days after its launch, IslamOnline.net's Ramadan tent inside Second Life was the target of two attacks of intended destruction and vandalism.
The first attack took place at 14:00GMT on Saturday, September 15, 2007. The second 3 hours later.
In the first attack, two male avatars showed up completely naked in the tent claiming they came here to "control the tent and remove all Muslims from it."
The two then proceeded to sexually harass the female avatars of a few Arab women who were present in the tent at the time.
They also attacked the women verbally and made fun of Muslims and Arabs.
The attackers kept stressing and repeating that they are here to cleanse the place of all Muslims.
The attacks were stopped short when a Bahraini girl with an avatar called Laracroft Bade stood up for the attackers.
Using virtual weapons of protection she was able to remove the attackers from the tent.
The second attack was conducted by a naked woman avatar but it failed as well.
Islamophobia
The identity of the attackers, called griefers, was not identified.
Drowned Pharaoh, one of the people who worked on the tent, said this is another example of "Islamophobia on Second Life."
He explained that a lot of people attack all religions on Second Life, not just Islam.
The tent had had a successful launch three days before the attack.
There were over 30 people present during the opening ceremony that the servers could not handle them all and crashed.
"The island has never had that much activity going on before," explained Muhammed Youssef, one of the managers of Chebi Mosque, which hosts IOL's Ramadan tent.
Second Life is a virtual world created in 2001. It is completely run by its residents and has over nine million registered users.
To reach the island, a visitor needs to create an account at www.secondlife.com and download a 70MB program.
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