Application Comment Details

The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) is the information and communications technology sector (ICT) regulator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (SA).

Amongst its roles and responsibilities include:

• Granting licenses in the ICT sector

• Protection of users’ rights

• Setting service quality standards

• Preparation of policies, regulatory frameworks and studies of ICT sector in SA

• domain name administration in SA

• Increasing the information security awareness level in SA

• Supervision of the National Committee for Information Society in SA

This application is potentially sensitive as the applied-for gTLD string (.islam) represents a faith followed by approximately 25% of the world's population.

Approximately 50 countries are Muslim-majority. With over 1.5 to 2 billion followers amounting to approximately 25% of the earth's population, Islam is the second-largest and one of the fastest-growing religions in the world

The applicant, as a private company, does not and in fact cannot represent the whole or even a majority of the worldwide Muslim community.

Further, we believe that any and all gTLD applications for any name in relation to religion or a specific community should be presented to representative members of that community for evaluation and the view of such members should be taken into account when granting or denying the application.

If this cannot be accomplished then these community and religious sensitive names/words should be restricted completely from being used as gTLD's altogether.

By not doing so we are concerned that you would be giving the use and control of important religious names to small groups if not individual entities that may cause distress to and be divisive vis-à-vis the worldwide Muslim community.

The current applicant clearly cannot demonstrate that it has an ongoing relationship with the whole or at a least majority of the Muslim community. The current applicant must be challenged to prove that it represents the whole or at least a majority of the Muslim community by submitting endorsements in writing from Islamic countries. For a global religion with billions of followers, it is not sufficient to receive only endorsement letters from one or more established institutions representing certain sub-communities.

Therefore, we respectfully request that ICANN not give this sensitive gTLD string to anyone without the full support of /endorsement in writing by all Muslim countries.