Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 2013-07-10

A new search engine called Halalgoogling targeted at Muslims has been launched, just like Google — minus nudity and anything else that's against Shariah or Islamic law.

The new search engine, which launched recently, mimics Google, but blocks sites and content “according to Islamic law,” reports The Express Tribune.

According to the search engines blog Halalgoogling is an alternative for the existing search engines that don’t satisfy the needs of the Muslims. Halalgoogling is designed to respect the Muslim Culture and is the World’s unique Muslim search engine that has a built in system to filter “haraam content”.

For many Muslims, being able to “Google” something just isn’t an option. Strict Islamic morals can make the Internet a treacherous place, with NSFW content like naked women and sacrilegious stories lurking near every click.

Using an “advanced special filtering system,” 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 haraam (forbidden) content. Halalgoogling doesn’t feature an image search option yet, but it does offer a shopping tab, along with news and  sports.

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 Halaal 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 haraam content that may have sneaked 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.”