The unfettered internet can be a moral battleground for the world's nearly 2 billion Muslims. Pornography, gambling, explicit content, harassment, and other distractions explicitly prohibited or discouraged by Islamic law lurk around every virtual corner. There has been a growing awareness that the internet and smartphone proliferation have allowed Satan to snare many Muslims through an array of insidious online vices and distractions that make them forgetful of Allah and Deen.
For Muslims trying to stay on the "straight path" pleasing to Allah, the modern web can be a spiritual minefield to be navigated carefully.
A new app and browser extension called Kahf Guard promises to clear the way. Created by Turkish startup Halalz, Kahf Guard acts as a comprehensive web filter to block out haram content and undesirable vices on the internet. The goal is to allow Muslims to experience the internet's benefits while avoiding the haram and undesirable distractions that undermine religious guidance and teachings.
Aptly dubbed as Haram block and DNS protection for the Muslim community, Kahf Guard filters out harmful content, ensuring that what you access online is safe, respectful, and in harmony with Islamic principles. Halalz says it has an internal full-time Mufti team that guides its Sharia-compliance-related decisions and it also seeks consultations from outside scholars where necessary. The company has an evolving list of websites that it blocks that are explicitly related to haram content. Moreover, users can also contribute to the list. It says it will make its list open in the future and users will be able to give feedback if it makes any mistake.
The premise draws inspiration from the Quran's warnings of how Satan "will lie in wait" to lead believers astray through temptations that make them forget Allah (7:16-17).
Halalz's founder, Nizam Uddin, first started to seriously contemplate the unbelievable ease and sometimes active prodding with which people get exposed to haram and immodesty online that is contrary to Islamic values in around 2015. A successful internet entrepreneur himself, Nizam has been aware of the rising internet and smartphone addiction. Studies suggest an average person checks his phone a staggering 2,617 times each day. A growing body of research indicates that internet and device addiction can have severe adverse effects on the mental, physical, and psychological well-being of people.
For Muslims, this is terrible news and is a manifestation of the Quran's warning about Satan. More importantly, all this time wasted mindlessly on prohibited entertainment is not spent in the remembrance of Allah. Consequently, many Muslims not only lose the opportunity to Ibadah and connections with Allah, but they unintentionally fall prey to an internet culture that has turned into a wasteland of inappropriate and unhealthy entertainment, most of which is prohibited or deemed inappropriate in Islam.
About two years back, Nizam started working on a solution to address the challenge that would eventually result in the Kahf Guard.
Kahf Guard blocks over 5.5 million websites deemed haram or inappropriate under Islamic teachings, from pornographic material to provocative advertising for things like gambling, alcohol, or dating services to anti-Islamic websites to mindless entertainment.
It blocks websites hosting adult content, promotions of illicit relationships, and other affronts to Islamic ethics, prevents phishing attacks, and malware, and enforces safe search settings on popular search engines. Family-friendly filters keep all ages away from age-inappropriate material.
Privacy is another core tenet: Kahf Guard tracks no user data or browsing histories.
Setup is simple across individual smartphones, computers, tablets, and home networks. The service can be extended to entire households by installing it on the router. The service is entirely free and the company says it will remain free forever.
As mentioned above, the average smartphone user spends nearly four hours per day on their device, much of it on digital entertainment and activities that are prohibited or undesirable under Islamic principles. Kahf Guard aims to help Muslims reclaim that time for more pious, productive, and family-friendly pursuits.
The goal is to help believers stay on the "straight path and facilitate greater devotion and ibadah (worship) to Allah by blocking or filtering out the most common online pitfalls, from pornographic content and inappropriate images (24:30-31) to haram advertisements and entertainment (5:90, 23:3), harassment and cyberbullying, spreading falsehoods and slander (22:30, 49:12), arrogance and vanity (31:18), illicit relationships (17:32) and other transgressions explicitly warned against in the Quran and Sunnah.
All in all, Kahf Guard aims to create a safer, purer digital environment to foster greater God-consciousness for Muslims globally.
Kahf Guard taps into a growing demand for accountability in consumer tech. From parental control apps to workplace content filters, the internet safety industry has swelled as concerns mount over society's unbridled online exposures.
What separates Kahf Guard is its direct alignment with Islamic teachings and theological frameworks around avoiding corruption, vulgarity, and sources of immorality. For believers wary of modern tech's vices, it provides a level of spiritual confidence when navigating the online wilderness.
Kahf Guard is part of a growing new ecosystem of Muslim-focused digital platforms offering sharia-compliant alternatives to mainstream tech products that offer a halal, healthy, and safe online experience for Muslims around the world.
Of course, no filter can sanitize the entire internet. Halalz acknowledges that Kahf Guard is just one tool for fostering a more halal digital experience. Mr. Uddin's broader vision is to create an ecosystem of digital tools and build a halal internet ecosystem for the global Muslim community. Halalz has been building a team of highly capable and motivated tech talents coming from big tech companies including Meta, Google, and Amazon among others. Along with Kahf Guard, the company has also released an early beta version of its halal browser called Kahf Browser with a built-in internally trained halal AI called Safe Gaze that can identify haram content in an image.
“Our ambition is to build a safe and halal ecosystem of internet products and services for Muslims worldwide,” explains Mr. Uddin. “We want to build nothing less than a halal parallel universe of technology and internet services compatible with Islamic ethics and beliefs. And we understand we can’t build it alone. To that end, as we launch our first product we seek adoption, feedback, and prayers from Muslims worldwide. We invite everyone to join us in this movement.”
With nearly 2 billion Muslims globally and growing concern regarding permissible and proper usage of internet/smartphone technology, there is a vast market of potential users looking for more faith-friendly ways to experience the online world. Kahf Guard offers this growing global Muslim internet users an option to experience digital services in a manner that is compatible with their faith and values. Learn more about about Kahf Guard here.
