Google Accused of Manipulating Search Results for 'Jihad'

Free Speech Defense and Jihad Watch have accused Google of skewing their search results to promote a post from the Islamic Supreme Council defending Jihad as a “misunderstood concept” when searching for “jihad.”

In their claims, they detail that when searching for the word “Jihad,” the Islamic Supreme Council’s article appears directly below the Wikipedia definition at the top of nearly 32 million results, despite having a global Alexa rating of just 567,527.

Jihad Watch, which appears in the search results one place below the Islamic Supreme Council, has a global Alexa rank of 25,092.

“The concept of jihad has been hijacked by many political and religious groups over the ages in a bid to justify various forms of violence. In most cases, Islamic splinter groups invoked jihad to fight against the established Islamic order. Scholars say this misuse of jihad contradicts Islam,” says the post on the Islamic Supreme Council’s site. “Jihad is not a violent concept… Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions.”

“Anyone doing a search for Jihad, will think they are seeing an opposing, authoritative view of JihadWatch’s, but the ‘Islamic Supreme Council’ is of no authority, it’s poor in every way, but the Googler will read all about all this peaceful unrepresentative Jihad, trusting Google,” wrote Free Speech Defense in their claims.

So how about another site which might be more of an authority on Jihad in the US, cair.com (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is constantly being updated, is far more popular at 146,590th place, actually probably even more so as it has a vast network of sites, a search for jihad site:cair.com gives 342 results, and is mentioned and linked to a wopping 60 million times, it’s mobile friendly and has HTTPS enabled, and it’s not even on the top 10 pages of results for a search on Jihad. Odd.

In July, searches for “presidential candidates” would only reveal three names at the top of Google’s search results: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein. After the absences of Republican Party candidate Donald Trump and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson were revealed, Google blamed the results on a “technical bug” rather than manipulation.

Claims that Google have been manipulating other search results in favor of Hillary Clinton have also been prominent during this election, with negative Clinton suggestions frequently being ruled out from searches, despite being top search suggestions on other engines.

WikiLeaks founder and Editor Julian Assange claimed that Google was “directly engaged in Hillary Clinton’s campaign” at a journalism forum in June, adding that should Clinton be elected, many high-ranking Google employees would be “placed into positions around the new Clinton presidency.”

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.