'Religion should be kept out of Internet domain names system'

US based Hindu leader Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that allowing domains based on religion or denomination would unnecessarily create more conflicts in a world already full of disputes.

Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, cautioned Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) about the hazards of allowing new Internet domains as .

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christian, .muslim, .hindu, .buddhist, .jew, etc.

ICANN is currently considering launching of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD), which is the technical term for the suffixes which appear at the end of Internet addresses and are used to route traffic through the Internet, like .biz, .com, .info, .jobs, etc.

Rajan Zed argued that this would generate discord and religious bodies would end up contesting various cybersquatter registrations. Similarly named denominations would claim exclusive rights to particular domains. Moreover, it would mean extra financial burden on already struggling religious organizations, benefiting mostly squatters and sellers.

ICANN would then have to sort out and decide who represented a particular religion on the Internet, going into the issues of fairness. It was simply unwise and opening a Pandora’s box, Zed added.

Rajan Zed quoted Article 2.1 (b) of ICANN GAC Principles Regarding New gTLDs, which says: “New gTLDs should respect the sensitivities regarding terms with national, cultural, geographic and religious significance.”

If ICANN needed any advice in this regard, it was most welcome to contact us, Zed said.

ICANN, formed in 1998, is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation, with participants from all over the world, dedicated to coordinating the Internet's addressing system. Based in Marina del Rey (California), it has offices in Washington DC, Brussels and Sydney. It currently has only 21 gTLDs for world’s about 1.5 billion (and growing) Internet users.