There was an interesting story on FoxNews.com the other day about the search engine Google appearing to censor search queries about Islam. The original story can be found here: What’s Islam? Don’t Ask Google.
When you use Google’s search engine, as you type in your search query, a box will appear below your search entry. This box will contain other popular search phrases that are similar to the words you have typed so far. For example, if you type “NFL,” you’ll see search phrases like, “NFL playoffs tv schedule,” “NFL playoff picture,” and so on.
You can also do this with various religions. If you type “Christianity is,” you will see the following results. Notice that every one of these contains an unfavorable description of Christianity.
Similarly, if you type “Judaism is,” you also get a list that is quite negative (though not as much as the list for Christianity).
However, if you type “Islam is,” something peculiar happens — the list of related searches completely disappears.
The story linked above quotes a spokesman for Google who explained that this was just a “bug” and that they were working to fix it. At the time of this post, it still has not been fixed.
What if this isn’t just a bug (after all, a glitch like this seems highly unlikely), but a deliberate censoring of search queries by Google? Why are the results for Christianity and Judaism shown, but the results for Islam hidden? What possible motive could they have?
I’m not suggesting that the programmers at Google harbor some sort of hatred for Christians or Jews. After all, the search results that show up are simply the most popular ones from the search queries of Google’s users. But why would the results for Islam be hidden? Why might Google deliberately hide them?
The answer: The people at Google are a bunch of cowards.
Remember the Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, who depicted Islam’s “prophet” Muhammad in a cartoon back in 2006? Remember the riots? Even after a few years, this man is still hated. Just a couple weeks ago, police stopped a Somali man with ties to Al-Qaida as he was entering this man’s home in an attempt to kill him.
What if someone like this man from Somalia visited Google’s website, typed “Islam is” into the search box, and before he could type the next word of his search, a box appeared below his saying things like, “Islam is false,” “Islam is wrong,” “Islam is a gutter religion.” Might he become angry? Could he perhaps decide to try to kill some of the ones working for Google, or blow up their headquarters, in a violent demonstration of religious zeal like the world has become accustomed to seeing by Muslims around the globe? Who knows? But it is awfully curious.
If those behind Google are content to allow the search results to display for Christianity and Judaism, they ought to allow it for Islam too, rather than bending over backwards like a bunch of pansies to cater to those who are unreasonable.
I don’t guess they need to worry about many Christians or Jews becoming offended and murdering them. So much for Islam being a “religion of peace.”
Andy Sochor
