HALAL INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE

Although it has made its debut only a few days ago, the new ImHalal search engine is fast winning the approval of several Egyptian internet users. The Islamic search engine, launched recently, filters internet content and presents users with what its creators call “clean web pages” that do not contain bawdy material. It gives Muslims around the world the chance to search the internet safely without coming across offending or pornographic content. Once a user comes into contact with offending content, the engine returns a negative search advice. When searching offending words like “sex” or “nudity”, for example, the search tells users that the results contain “haram” or un-Islamic material. The world’s first Islamic search engine is available in 15 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Persian and Turkish as well as English. In Egypt, where more than 90 per cent of the 80-million population is Muslim and around 12 per cent has access to the internet, the new search engine gives many people exactly what they had been looking for. The founder, Reza Sardeha, a 20-year-old Iranian-Kuwaiti student living in the Netherlands, hopes his new engine would become the number one search site for every Muslim user. Surprisingly the ImHalal is also being given a wide welcome mat by the nation’s sizable Christian minority.