NEW DELHI: A Dutch company has launched a new search engine that aims to protect Muslims from accidentally bumping into explicit material while su rfing the Web. Called ImHalal.com, or "I am Halal," is the world's first Muslim search engine.Reza Sardeha, founder of AZS Media Group, which runs the search engine, told The Daily Star that the idea grew after his friends complained of bumping into sexually explicit content when using search engines such as Yahoo or Google.
According to The Daily Star, the site's 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 told the publication that the company is now in talks with Imams to determine what else might be considered Haram so that it can be blocked on the site. They also have plans to keep adding to the search engine with what Sardeha calls 'Islamic widgets.'
The site, launched earlier this month, claims to have received more than 400,000 unique visitors so far.
