Yahoo! Bans "Allah" in Screen Names

szembek writes "According to The Register it seems that Yahoo! is banning the use of the string "Allah" in all screen names. The issue apparently became apparent when Linda Callahan attempted to use her surname in her screen name. The following link has an interesting list of terms that Yahoo does allow, and ones they don't."

Re:ban Islam founder name too?

[Distinguished Hero]

It's also at least the 5th most popular name in England and Wales as of 2004 (probably even higher by now). Link [timesonline.co.uk].

Time for the English and Welsh to learn a real life lesson about exponential functions.

Re:Dumb filters are annoying

[Billosaur]

Ignoring the whole political issue of it, if they are going to filter a string, they should at least allow common legit strings that it is a substring of.

And there's no excuse for it. I had to write filters for domain names and while it induces some complications, the proper use of regex's and lookahead assertions made it a lot easier. If you take into account that a particular string may appear within another common string, you can tease it out and compare it to the string as a whole. You have to have a lot of rules because this is mainly an exercise in exceptions (Is "allah" capitalized? What appears before it? What appears after it), but the bottom line is that it's not an insoluble problem.

If there's a problem with people creating offensive usernames, then make it so they don't go active for 24 hours. Let a script check them, flag the weird ones, and then let a human being make the judgement. This isn't going to solve anything anyway; I doubt this restriction applies to passwords, so anyone with an axe to grind can probably express their frustration that way without fear of penalization.

Dhimmitude

[Erbo]

Looks like Yahoo! is headed down the path to dhimmitude [dhimmitude.org]. And I think their reasons for doing it come down, in the end, to fear.

This is similar to why American newspapers won't publish the Danish Jyllands-Posten "Mohammed" cartoons, and why American TV networks won't show them. To that end, here's some insightful commentary by DailyPundit commenter "Jack" on this issue (as quoted in this thread [dailypundit.com]):

There is a thing about the reason that the Muhammed cartoons not being published that seems to have been left unsaid.

An important thing.

Newspapers and Television news shows are not showing the cartoons out of fear of what that might cause. Terror at what might happen to them, their homes, their lives.

Terror, as in 'Terrorism'.

The West's shining fundamental tenet, the First Amendment, has been attacked by Islam, terrorized.

And it fell faster than the World Trade Center.

No planes were needed, no bombs. No innocent victims needed to have their heads sawn off.

They used our foolish nature, our tolerance, our multiculturalism, our determination to believe the best about people and fashioned it into a spear--and rammed it into our heart.

They didn't merely destroy buildings this time. They took aim--and hit, our very souls.

I would say rise up. I would say, arm yourself, fight for your country.

But it's too late. Our government, our press--our allies are already accepting the scimitar at their necks. They're already sold us all down the river--just to buy a few more moments to allow themselves to milk the status quo.

And Yahoo! appears to be falling over themselves to do likewise.

Just remember the famous quote from Strictly Ballroom, Yahoo!: "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."

Re:Nobody can imagine how puerile it can get

[Iphtashu Fitz]

As I think we've all learned long since, in this arms race the trolls and spammers of the world always eventually show more imagination and perseverence than the filter writers.

It takes a hell of a lot of more imagination for filter writers to ensure their filters don't cause any collateral damage, as both the Allah & breast cancer examples demonstrate. It reminds me of the late '90s when I was working for a search technology startup. One of the first projects I worked on was a porn filter. We found out very quickly that trying to rely on the string 'XXX' was completely unacceptable when we discovered that websites dedicate to Super Bowl XXX, any sites that displayed copyright dates as Roman numerals (or any other sites with Roman numerals), etc. all got tagged as porn.

Re:Why Allah?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the name of Allah banned while the use of the god of other religions is not?

Like Han said, "droids don't rip your arms out of your sockets when they lose. Wookies have been known to do that."

Re:Jesus Christ!

[smackt4rd]

Umm, maybe you've never heard of eric rudolph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph [wikipedia.org] or Irving Rubin? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Rubin [wikipedia.org]

ALLAH means GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

Allah is just "God" in Arabic. It is the same God as the Christian God. My parents are Christians from Iraq, and they use the word Allah in regards to our Christian God. It is the same God we worship since our ancestors converting to Christianity around 2000 years ago in that area. I always see people confusing "Allah" as some other deity, which is wrong.

Re:Jesus Christ!

[Distinguished Hero]

Put another way, all Muslims are prone to utter death threats at those that disagree with them?
Probably not, but at the same time, not all Nazi's were prone to run their own little concentration camps in their own basement. It's called division of labour (and probably a Gausian distribution for support of the actions in questions). "Put another way," what percentage of the Muslim world has expressed support for freedom of speech at the expense of their compatriots? (This is not a retorical question, I'm interested in an answer).

Adolf Hitler was a Christian
Hardly.
Here [paradise.net.nz] are some quotes by Hitler, most from "Hitler's Table Talk" (published 1953):
"National Socialism [Nazism] and religion cannot exist together.... "
"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure."
"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity"
"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."
"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease."
"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics."

Re:Jesus Christ!

[gnuyarlathotep]

The percentage of muslims who murder people in terrorist acts is small, but the percentage of muslims that support those acts is much higher than you Islamofascist apologists ever admit. A full 60% of polled Palenstinians supported the World Trade Center attack, tens of thousands of them paraded around with banners of Bin Laden in the streets. Arafat was so embarassed that the murderous nature of his people was on public display that he had his own men shoot into the crowds! Very high percentages of people in Islamic countries approve of terrorist acts, 30-60% in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakitstan, Jordon, Saudi, and Yemen. This is nothing like the joke you make of Islamic hatred and violence against non-muslims. Look at the burning embassies! The West is vilafied CONTINOUSLY in the Islamic press -- virtually all of it controlled by the dictatorship governments. But a set of cartoons has muslims across the world, burning emabassies, kidnapping foreignors, threatening to behead ANYONE who speaks ill of Islam, killing people and chanting "Death to (insert country with a free press here)". Nothing Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, or Sikhs in modern times has EVER EVER come close to this Islamic stupidity. NOTHING. Hundreds of thousands rallied in Lebanon with banners saying: "We are ready to sacrifice our children for you, O Prophet Muhammad." Lovely! Kill your kids over a cartoon. Some more islamic nicities: "Damn your beliefs and your liberty." "Whoever insults Prophet Muhammad is to be killed." From London we had: "Go to Hell Freedom" 'Behead those who insult the prophet' "Free speech go to hell." "Slay those who insult Islam" These are not suicide bombers, these are typical muslims and they are telling non-muslims that we have to obey their wishes. No amount of pathetic spin from apologists will ever convince a non-self-hating Western citizen otherwise. More people were killed because of muslims in Nigeria in one day over these cartoons than have been killed in abortion violence in all of history. I am not a christian, not a jew and I hate George W Bush, so there goes 99% of the arguments you have against me.

A workaround?

[happymark]

a11ah (use the numeric one to replace L)

Re:It's a good thing...

[Terranaut]

Didn't AOL get some stick for doing this in the last century? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_Problem [wikipedia.org]

Re:Secondary filters?

[Surt]

I'm sure they can write such an accept filter, the question is, do they know in advance they need to. If you're told in the morning 'we need to ban all usernames containing allah' by this afternoon because of this cartoon violence stuff going on, what would your implementation look like? Would you have taken the time for a surname search to find out every surname to unblock? And what uncommon name might you miss along the way? The problem is, you don't know what acceptable name you've accidentally filtered out until someone complains about being filtered. And then there's no way to fix it: the person is unhappy, the complaint is already public, and even if you turn around and fix the problem the next day or next week, nothing gained.

Re:Jesus Christ!

[twofidyKidd]

Where are these "Christian" extremists exactly, and whose embassies are they burning?

You forgot, voting their leader into Presidential office.

Re:War on Terror

[Seraphim_72]

Here is one to keep you warm until that day:
"War on Drugs" [wikipedia.org] now working on it's 35th year, with no end in sight.
Sera

Re:Jesus Christ!

[broter]

can someone please tell him it's the same god ... ?

No we can't, because they arent the same and never have been. The Muslim god, Allah, is based off of a member of the local pantheon at the time their prophet. The Christian god is a bastardization of the Hebrew god which is the result of a Monotheistic push from a violence minority starting roughly around the time of the biblical exodus. Some theorise that is was the result of the Egyptian cult of Aton, started by Akhenaton, that drove a murderous sect of Judeism (see Mose's responce to the Hebrews' rejection of his 10 commandments) to become Monotheistic.

So you see, there's good evidence that, although they all hold the same philosophy on rigorism, the various branches of monotheism are only related by their violent means of enforcing believe (whether used internally or externally)

But your milage may vary.

Re:Jesus Christ!

[mrops]

Ok... So far have only seen non-muslim point of view... If you do know about islam... it is the same god because islam says Both Jesus (know as Isa in Islam)... moses (know as Musa) and Abraham (Ibrahim), david (dawood), john (jahn), Joseph(yusuf).... were all messengers of the same god.... The god of Mohammad... So again... depends how you look at it.. Based on Islam... they are all same god. And then... Whats in a name, rose by.....

What about the oil barons?

[rubypossum]

What about the people financing these acts of terrorism? Generally it's the mega rich sheeks and dictators. Arguing that Christian fundamentalists would go around bombing people if they had the money is absurd. Relatively the people who finance Al-Queida are vastly more rich than any Christians in the mid-west.

Islam has a long well documented history of fanaticism that involves killing. Mohammed himself killed thousands in all the battles for Jihad (i.e. taking over all countries until Islam is universal.) To quote from a Hindu source about Mohammed's war atrocities.


http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/mogha l_atro.html [hindunet.org]

You must remember, without Charlemagne it's quite possible that Arabic would be the dominant language in the EU right now.

And while you can claim the crusades as a Christian example of war atrocities. I think you'd find it to be one of the only cases in history. Very few modern Christians would consider the cruisades to be in line with their faith, even remotely. Nowhere in the New Testament does it suggest to go out and try and conquer countries in the name of Christ.

Re:Jesus Christ!

[Teun]

This reply spoils my earlier moderation but w.t.f.

The God of Muslims, Christians and Jews is identical, the designation they all agree on is: "The God of Abraham".

Re:Jesus Christ!

[gnuyarlathotep]

I have no idea where you are getting your facts from, your statement is totally wrong,

No, it's very correct. I base my conclusions on facts, not on any kind of religion.

please include a URL supporting your statements next time.

http://www.pmw.org.il/Latest%20bulletins%20new.htm #b261205 [pmw.org.il]

And there's more:
Only 41% of Palestinians viewed the attack on the world trade center as terrorism. Only 46% thought the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was an act of terrorism.
http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2001/p3a.html [pcpsr.org]
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=13420 [imra.org.il]

In this poll only 36% of Palestinians thought 9/11 was an act of terrorism.
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1226762.html [crosswalk.com]

Thousands more can be found. Google is your friend. My favorite terrorist supporters are the ones in SE Asia (I think it was Bangladesh) that were running around with any pictures they could find of Osama Bin Laden, including one that had Burt the muppet from Sesame Street beside Bin Laden's shoulder! Here's the link http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blo samabert2.htm [about.com] .


Oh, and by the way, "Palenstinians" is correctly spelt: Palestinians

Dude, its called a typo. They come easily when you do not have spell check.

Re:As a gay atheist, it's reasonable to fear Islam

[Anonymous Coward]

That Islam is against homosexuality is no secret. This is no different from other faiths. Islam is also against sex outside of marriage, even between a man and a woman.

The original poster is wrong in one regard: the crime of Zina (extra-marital sex) is provable only by either of a) 4 witnesses (not 3), or b) by voluntary confession.

The only two known cases of punishment in the life time of the prophet were by confession. The two people felt guilty and it was eating them, and wanted absolution. The prophet tried to make them go, saying "Go, you may just have kissed .. Go, you may just have touched ...". But they were adamant on getting the punishment.

Interesting trivia: Baghdad was the capital of the Eastern Islamic world for many centuries. Historians say that for 5 centuries, not a single case of stoning an adulterer was recorded.

The Bible prescribes similar punishment for adultery and homosexuality.

I notice your attempt to change the subject to Christianity that you commit several times in your defense. I can understand why: you'd much rather me talk about Christianity than continue talking about Islam. By discussing Islam its ugly secrets come out and the Kufr will wake up to the threat.

He was merely pointing out that this is not unique to Islam, and is shared by other faiths that are more familiar to the audience.

He was not trying to distract.

In other words, I'm not my son's parent. I'm merely a "caregiver". This is in direct violation of my rights as an adoptive parent, and one of many good reasons to reject Islam.

This is just a matter of symantics. Nothing changes the biological relationship of a father and mother to their offspring. That is merely what Islam says. Raising an orphan is recommended and is greatly appreciated by God (if you read the Quran, you will find several references). You just cannot change the biological relationship, and their family name stays what it is.

In other words, it is sometimes permissible! So much for the "major and hellworthy sin"! The muslim from whyislam.org indicated that it was permissible to lie to the Kufr "only during war." And which "house" do I live in? It's the Dar al-Harb, correct? That means "house of war", correct?

No, you are wrong. As much as many want to make it an either/or (Dar Al Islam = House of Islam, and Dar Al Harb = House of War) this is not Dar Al Harb. This is Dar Al Aman (House of Safety). As long as a muslim is able to worship freely, and not prevented from doing what Islam says, then it is not Dar Al Harb.

So, this invalidates your argument.

The Quran sanctions violence (remember "strike at the neck of unbelievers"? Hence, beheadings)

Did you read the verses, or are you repeating bigoted drivel?

Here is what it says: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in battle), smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind (the ropes) firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: until the war lays down its burdens."

You can read it here http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/047.qmt.html [usc.edu]

The context here is war, and in battle the objective is to subdue the enemy by force, and kill them if the need be. It is clear that prisoners and taken, and then either freed for ransom, or just for generosity.

Nothing about kidnapping journalists and beheading them.

Ummah can rebuild the Kahlifah (sic)

Yeah, many Muslims think that the Khilafah is the cure to all ills they have (and they are many, seeing the Muslim world's troubles). This is an overly simplistic wishful thinking, and is not realistic. It is merely escapism.

If you look at Islamic history, the unified Islamic state only existed for merely a few DECADES over the last 14th century.

You are not going to like this, but I am going to say it anyway: this is no dif