Islam Is…

January 28, 2010 By Guest Contributor 19 Comments

The Google is now working again.

Censoring that search was a bad idea. It’s good to see Google fixing that mistake.

Filed Under: General 19 Comments
  • Joel

    “Islam is Google”?

    I knew it!

  • Danikajaye

    Put in “Christianity is” and you get much the same thing. Put in “Buddhism is” and it tells you “Buddhism is atheism”- since when? Put in “Jehovas witness” and you get “is a cult”. Bahahahahaha. I love google even more.

  • Twin-Skies

    I got:

    “Islam is a cult”

    “Islam is of the devil t-shirt”

    Next question: Where can I buy said shirt? :)

  • http://garics.blogspot.com Garic

    I always found this a bit odd though. Three facts make me wonder if Google was actually censoring it at all.

    First, “Muhammad is” produced all the expected results, and calling Muhammad names is at least as bad as calling Islam names. Are Google both PC enough to censor “Islam is”, but not bright enough to wonder if there are other things that might enrage Muslims?

    Second, if they’re that jumpy about Muslims, why not block all search results for “[RELIGION] is”? That would at least look consistent, and would be just as easy.

    Third, it didn’t really take very much to make them uncensor it.

    My suspicion is that it was either some weird error, or (perhaps more likely) it was just the work of one Muslim, or one over-PC person, in their censorship department.

  • Jenny Bliss

    and our survey says.. DING DING DING top answer! i knew google was just another incarnation of family fortunes :D next thing your gonna have the 1 on 1 round and win a really bad car or holiday to a place you dont wanna go hehe

  • Pepe Silvia

    The best is Islam is Google. Now THAT Is a movie.

  • Polly

    Googlo-islamo-faschism. Google and Islam, together they WILL take over the world.
    Good luck finding a good pulled-pork sandwich then, you infidel bastards.

  • Mary

    Want something scary? Type in “Jihad is “.

    For something fun, type in “Religion is”.

  • Polly

    “Philosophy is a walk on slippery rocks”
    “Religion is a smile on a dog”

    “Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box”

    Yup, just as I thought.

  • Jeff Purser

    So I typed in “Atheism is” and got a bunch of crappy suggestions.

    I decided to “seed” the search and typed in “Atheism is rational”

    At the top of the results page, I got

    Did you mean: atheism is irrational

    No, I didn’t.

  • JB Tait

    I tried “Christianity is ” and got the same list as for “Islam is ” but “Pastafarianism is ” is still empty.

  • Dave B.

    What a lot of people are missing in this story is that Google is not some magic box that pops out instant search results. There is a lot of hardware and software going into giving you suggestions as you type. It’s really amazing that such a feature is even possible given the scope of Google. It shouldn’t be surprising that it fails to work on some phrases. One of those phrases was bound to make Google look bad in one way or another.

    For this reason, I personally find Google’s explanation that “Islam is” didn’t work with suggestions due to a bug highly plausible. If the censorship were intentional, I would expect to see other similar phrases censored as well, or perhaps even a blocking of search results.

  • http://sunombreenvano.blogspot.com/ Diego, El Mapache

    Google is putting it up against China and Islam. Those are some balls.

  • Chal

    I got:

    “Islam is a cult”

    “Islam is of the devil t-shirt”

    Next question: Where can I buy said shirt?

    Did you try Googling it…?

  • Miko

    If those are the results it’s suggesting, the system clearly needs some work.

    Put in “Buddhism is” and it tells you “Buddhism is atheism”- since when?

    The evidence that Buddhism was originally intended as a religion is pretty slim. There are a few mentions of local deities, but it’s hard to know what to make of them since the Pali language expresses some concepts through use of metaphoric language involving deities, so just as an English speaker who says “adamant” probably isn’t referring to the mythological material with god-granted strength it’s possible that all references to ‘gods’ in early Buddhist texts were likewise metaphorical. (And since they weren’t written down until hundreds of years later, there are also obvious accuracy issues.) Also, the teachings attributed to Buddha very rarely stray into areas such as reincarnation, other planes of existence, karma, etc., and sometimes the teachings which do will appear only in the texts of certain geographical regions (leading again to authenticity issues). Rather, these concepts were part of the existing religion and mainly get play in Buddhism in the form of people asking the Buddha questions about them (and these questions are often answered in the form “If (whatever) exists, then (etc.). If (whatever) does not exist, then (etc.).”) So, the best answer is that historically Buddhism itself is neutral on most of the issues. Because of this neutrality, cultures that Buddhist teachings spread to were able to insert their own pre-existing religious beliefs into the Buddhist teachings, leading to the two being often mistakenly identified as a unified whole. So, Buddhism is neither atheistic or theistic, but can be joined with either depending on the wishes of the particular Buddhist.

  • http://billpg.com/ Bill P. Godfrey

    “Atheists are ” is returning nothing! Censorship! Censorship!

  • Greg

    JB Tait, you rock.

    Somebody gimme some tissues, LMAO.

    (I tried “Christianity is ” and got the same list as for “Islam is ” but “Pastafarianism is ” is still empty.)

  • Jeff Ritter

    I really liked the religion is…suggestions but the best for me was the god is..an astronaut.

  • ab

    But not, interestingly, for “muslims are.”