Tijara Blog

Muslim spam is on the increase. At least that’s what it feels like to me. I seem to be inundated with emails from well intended muslim companies advertising their various products and services. And then there are the dozens of newsletters and event notices from dawah organisations. A quick straw poll of family and friends shows that there are many others who are receiving such emails also. Maybe I’m being a little harsh but if I am receiving emails from a company or organisation that I have not shared my email address with then I don’t see how this is anything other than spam, albeit muslim spam.

Muslim companies and organisations must improve their online communication practices and not fall into spamming. And of course I include Tijara Pages in this too.

Firstly, to those muslims that sell or share my (and by extension everyone’s) email address: please stop. Just because I emailed you at some point doesn’t give you permission to pass my email address on to somebody else, even if they are a reputable organisation. In fact, if they are a reputable organisation who are involved in good works in the community then quite frankly they should not be building their networks using questionable methods such as this.

Secondly, to those muslim organisations, if you are going to buy or acquire my email address at least have the courtesy to ask me if I want to join your mailing list. Send me an introductory but brief email describing what your future mailings will contain, tell me exactly what you will and won’t do with my email address and ask me for my permission.

Give me the option to subscribe to your mailing list. Don’t assume that I want to join and definitely definitely don’t sign me up and then just include an unsubscribe link.

If you still insist on forcefully signing me up to your mailing list, if I really don’t have any say in the matter then at the very least, please honour any request I make to unsubscribe from your list. It is disingenuous of you to include an unsubscribe link in your email and then when I click on it to remove myself you still continue to send me email after email.

And lastly, when I have unsubscribed and you have stopped sending me emails, please don’t share my email address with anyone else. Not without asking my permission and irrelevant of how deserving you think their cause is.

An email address is no different to somebody’s telephone number and should be treated as such. Signing people up to your email lists without their permission and imposing your messages on them is analogous to harvesting people’s telephone numbers and cold calling them. And you wouldn’t do that now would you? No I didn’t think so.