Why can’t I use anything I want as a user name?

A complete discussion of this issue will be found inshAllaah in our site guidelines when completed; however since this is the first aspect of people's interaction with the site when they sign up for an account we wanted to take the time to explain why we have established this as one of our site guidelines.

One of the well known scholars  in Yemen Shaykh ‘Abdul-Azeez al-Bura'ee, may Allaah preserve him said:

"It is proper for one who contributes to websites on the internet to contribute using his true name, which the people know him by, as there is no need for those names which are unknown or imaginary. Sometimes one person can register with several names and it is not known who he really is, or someone is with his friends replying to them and they reply to him, and they think that he is from a different country, while really he is at their side.

Because of this, I advise that one should write his true name, and if he wishes to have one of the strange names of the people of the internet as well as that, than he should sign his real name at the bottom of every page, so-and-so son of so-and-so, and he can make the name that is at the top of the page whatever he chooses or wants, if he wishes to have a strange (user) name.”

(Seeking Knowledge and Participation in Internet forums by Sheikh al-Bura'ee )

And as was mentioned in their conditions established for the well known beneficial Arabic forums Al-Baydha,

“…You must use your real name, as the call to Ahlus-Sunnah-wal-Jama'ah is a clear call, whose outward affair is not different than its inward one, and we have nothing which it is necessary to hide by writing under assumed names, and the scholars have made clear the importance of this...”

(Conditions for participation in Al-Baydha Forums)

Alhamdulillah, we are striving to benefit from both the advice of our scholars as well as the valuable experience gained by our brothers upon the Sunnah in their efforts to spread knowledge through the internet. If there is a question as to the form of the name that you wish to use, please do not hesitate to write and ask for assistance. And the success is from Allaah.