Infotech: first "halal" search engine

It is difficult to decide: is a pre-filtered search engine that locks out sites that have not previously been approved as meeting certain standards actually a good thing.

Ignore, if you will, the purpose behind the search engine launched today. Think more widely.

There has been considerable criticism of both Google and Yahoo for their agreement to block certain content from the versions of their search engines available in China. The argument is that blocking access to the world at large is a bad thing.

Take the concept a step further: is a search engine that is highly selective as to what it displays really anything more than a directory?

Aside from the rights and wrongs of censorship - which are not the purposes of this discussion - the question arises as to who makes the decisions as to what is acceptable, on what basis and why.

The problems with this are ably demonstrated by Malaysian satellite broadcaster Astro. It takes feed from a number of providers. It delays re-broadcast so that its censors can remove those parts that its censors decide are inappropriate.

But it does not store those "edits" and each repeat of the program is censored afresh. So what is censored on one version may not be on another. Is kissing acceptable? Sometimes. But often brutally cut. Words in songs - the titles of TrueBlood and the Credits of Any Dream will do are particularly butchered. The word "ass" is removed - even when it means "donkey" and - on one particularly ridiculous occasion - as part of the word "Ambassador."

A comment by a Malaysian MP some two years ago responded to the question of whether Astro was protecting Muslims from inappropriate material. The MP said that he had visited Astro - and they had some 300 "editors" working on it. Since then, Astro appears to have implemented some form of automatic censorship - which leads to the mistakes noted above.

Astro also demonstrates the problem with interpretation: in Malay, both the squid and the cuttlefish are known as "sotong" despite being different species. A TV documentary comparing the two used the term sotong for the first part of the programme about squid. When it came to discussing the cuttlefish, a problem arose. If the purpose of the programme was to explain the differences between the species, then obviously using the same name for both would create confusion. So the English name was used: except that the presenter was American and pronounced his Ts as Ds. The subtitles therefore referred throughout to a "cuddlefish."

On another occasion, the American use of "period" for "full stop" appeared in the subtitles as "menstruati." Twice. It doesn't take a linguistic genius to work out why that was wrong.

The irony, for Malaysian TV viewers, is that the state-run channels, which are all carried in both analogue and via Astro's platform, apply a completely different - and far more liberal - interpretation of what is acceptable and what is not.

In much of the Middle East, the same UK, US and Australian originated programmes are shown uncut - or nearly so - including some that would raise eyebrows in Middle England.

It's not as if skin is banned: many countries that exercise censorship in entertainment programming show beauty parades, including close ups on breasts and mounds of Venus clad with clinging fabrics in the swimsuit competitions with lingering shots on legs - and hair.

And violence is rarely regarded as inappropriate: witness the popularity of American wrestling which has as its core values wilful harm to another and cheating: both of which are contrary to much Muslim teaching.

These examples, then, set the scene for why an Islamic search engine generates many questions.

Announcing the service, AZS Media Group Ltd says "The search engine, ImHalal.com (http://www.imhalal.com/ ), only fetches results that are flagged as to be "Halal". The search engine uses various techniques to determine which results fetched are supposed to be "Halal" or "Haram". Once a user comes in contact with content of explicit nature, the search engine will return a negative search advice. The lack of tools for Muslims to be able to continue their online activities responsibly has inspired ImHalal.com to enter the search engine market. "

The company is a start up operating from The Netherlands but seemingly not incorporated there (the Netherlands does not use Ltd as a suffix for corporations).

The website is officially launched tomorrow but previews show some very interesting features.

A "my note" feature in the bottom corner is a static panel that allows quick notetaking and saving; the comments form is an Ajax-style pop over, greying out the main screen whilst it's active, there's a choice of backgrounds with a mix of graphics and plain white.

But the filter still allows links to a variety of girlie sites and although a warning before the images search produces results says that the filter is not fully effective and recommending caution, it still displays images that some my decide are offensive.

So, is imhalal.com a valuable addition to the search engine landscape?

We would have to say that, in its current state of development, probably not. Its results are patchy and compared to leading search engines much of the content we used to test did not appear in the first ten pages when it was on the first page of the market leaders. That, of itself, is not necessarily all bad - and it doesn't fill up the first few slots of most enquiries with various wikis which are, like the ad farms that were mercifully absent, one of the reasons the the market leaders are irritating. But, provided it can work its way through the minefield of being selective without being unduly censored, then it may, in time, turn out to be a useful tool.

But it's going to need a shed-load of investment before it reaches that stage.