World's first Muslim search engine filters 'haram' content - The Orange Room

Dry Ice

By Josie Ensor
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, September 09, 2009

BEIRUT: Muslims will be able to surf the Web without accidentally encountering explicit material, after a Dutch company launched the world’s first Islamic search engine Monday. The search engine, ImHalal.com, or “I am Halal,” works by filtering Internet content so it does not return the user any results considered forbidden and only shows those that are deemed halal, as approved by Muslim religious law.

Reza Sardeha, founder of AZS Media Group which runs the search engine, said the idea grew after his friends complained of bumping into sexually explicit content when using search engines such as Yahoo! or Google.

“The first step was to block these sites,” he said.

The filter examines the user’s search terms and the websites that are returned, trawling for a “non-halal list” of words that may indicate forbidden fruit. On the site, sex-related terms such as “gay,” “lesbian” or simply “sexy” merit a haram level of three; the highest score on the list.

But “beer” and “pork” only merit a score of one, while “drugs” comes up as a level two. There are, however, no restrictions on more general concepts that are forbidden in Islam such as “suicide” or “magic.”

Sardeha spent the last year developing the search engine to widen access to users all over the world and it is now available in 15 different languages, including English, Farsi and Arabic. The company is expecting its largest audience in the Middle East.

Sardeya said that ImHalal would offer a real alternative for people worried about coming across explicit content when they search the web. “Before we started this, we got the feeling that a lot of people in the Middle East, a lot of Muslims, really avoided the Internet and prevented their children from accessing it because they were afraid of what their children might come across,” he said.

Ali Gebran from Beirut, Lebanon, says that the search engine could change the way he and his family use the Internet.

“It is fantastic. Now I can feel safer letting my children search the web. There are far too many things online that I do not want to see, let alone my children.

“I used to believe that many things about the Internet were not compatible with Islam; especially all of the adverts that pop up that you have not asked to look at. I think the search engine will become a great tool for people, particularly Muslims in Lebanon.”

Sardeha said the company is now in talks with imams to determine what else might be considered haram so it can be blocked on the site. They also have plans to keep adding to the search engine with what Sardeha calls “Islamic widgets.”

“In one month’s time we hope to add one such as prayer time, so that you can easily find out when to pray, and when you come to the website you will see a quote from the Koran.

“Our goal is to become the number one website in every Muslim home,” Sardeha added.

ImHalal joins a fast increasing list of Islamic web services targeting a rapidly growing number of Muslim Internet users and comes as rival search engine Google adds to the list of domains across the Arab world.