The latest addition to the search engine world is Imhalal.com, an Islam-based service:
According to the site: “ImHalal.com is search engine designed for Muslims to be able to continue their online activities in a safe and clean environment. Using ImHalal.com will prevent you from ‘accidentally’ bumping into explicit content.”
For example, if you search for “pig” or “beer” using the engine, you receive a warning telling you that your results may be haram (forbidden in Islam).
The word “sex” gets you on level 2 of the site’s haram scale. “Porno,” sends you to level 3, which welcomes you with a very strong red message.
But ImHalal isn’t the only religion-based search engine I’ve recently encountered:
Seekfind.org provides “God-honoring and spiritually encouraging” content, making sure all results are Bible based.
If you search for “Darwin” (as in Charles), you’ll find articles questioning his mental health. “Abortion” gives you tons of “pro-life” links and arguments.
Both sites promote themselves as providing a safe framework for followers to search the Web in.
And perhaps they’re right. The World Wide Web is also the ‘World Wild Web.’