New Islam-approved search engine for Muslims
Islam-approved search engine for Muslims, halalgoogling.com.
By Michele Laufik
of MSN News
A new search engine targeted for Muslims called Halalgoogling was launched Sunday. It is just like Google — minus nudity and anything else that's against Islamic law.
Islam-approved search engine for Muslims, halalgoogling.com.
For many observant Muslims, being able to “Google” something just isn’t an option.
Strict Islamic mores can make the Internet a treacherous place, with NSFW content like naked women and sacrilegious stories lurking near every click.
Enter Halalgoogling.
The new search engine, which launched on Sunday, mimics Google, but blocks sites and content “according to Islamic law,” reports The Express Tribune.
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Using an “advanced special filtering system,” explains the Tribune, the site culls information from other major search engines, such as Google and Bing, while blocking results involving pornography, homosexuality, gambling and more.
Outlawed words, such as “nude,” return this message: No results found or you have searched Haram (forbidden) content.
According to Halalgoogling’s blog, “haram” is an Arabic term referring to every deed or act that violates Allah’s rules.
The term “halal’’ is the opposite and applies to anything permitted or lawful in Islam.
Halalgoogling doesn’t feature an image search option — yet — but it does offer a shopping tab, along with sports and news.
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With 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, the search engine was created to “satisfy the Internet needs of the Muslim community, so each Muslim can surf the web in the Halal way,” according to the project's mission statement.
But the site isn’t foolproof.
The beta site and its creators issued a preventive mea culpa in case a user encounters any haram content that may have slipped through the cracks: “We apologize for any unintentional mistake that we might have made or could make in the future.”
Users are encouraged to report any inappropriate content that is “contrary to the principles of Islam or content you think it should be excluded from the Haram filtering system.”
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