I don't think it's that. I put a .htaccess file on the server with a permanent redirect to "http://www.google.com" and as soon as I loaded the page I got redirected to that link. So it's not my apache bypassing the .htaccess file. I can't go check if the allowOverride is "all" but the one in charge of the server told me that it should be. I also assume that since it's redirecting through my .htaccess file that it probably is.

I'll keep digging ...