Criticism

From EdinburghLulz

Anonymous has been labelled a group of religious bigots and cyber terrorists by the 'Church' of Scientology for it's recent efforts. Our main justification for fighting the church, besides the abuse of it's members and pyramid scheme structure, is the way they demean basic human rights. Specifically free speech.

Suppressors of Free Speech

The church have defended themselves by saying Anonymous is suppressing free speech by attacking the Scientology website. Again, Anonymous does not suppress that information. If a Scientologist wanted to hand you out a leaflet or talk to you in the street, a nearby Anonymous is not likely to walk up and smack him/her in the face to silence him/her. No, they can have their say.

Although we are against the Church's practices, we will defend all Scientologists' right to free speech. Indeed, Scientologists are encouraged to engage with Anonymous to discuss current issues.

Cyber Terrorists

The Scientology website boasts many false figures, lies about Scientology and a shopping network where their members often purchase jewellery and trinkets. We're against this, the release of false information in order to sucker more people into their "religion".

Several Scientology sites were DDoS attacked over a period of 3 days in January. It generated large media attention and had the effect of informing the public about the abhorrent behaviour of the Church of Scientology, and recruiting many individuals to the cause of Anonymous. Attacking Scientology websites are now seen as counter-productive for the Anonymous movement, and will not be repeated. Instead, when researching Scientology, the public are encouraged to view both Scientology and anti-Scientology websites and come to their own conclusion.

Religious Biggots

Moving on to religious bigotry, Anonymous is not persecuting the members beliefs or threatening their lives. We have, in the past, referred to the church as a cult (and continue to) and referred to their core beliefs in an offensive way. Anonymous did apologise for this recently and discuss the reasons why we're attacking the church. For more information, see Benefits of Scientology.

It is important to iterate that our actions are against the Church's abhorrent practices, not their beliefs. Every human being has the right to their own beliefs, and indeed there are Christian members among our number.