The ICANN board of directors has made a decision on the applications for the new .ISLAM and .HALAL gTLDs. The application for both domains was made by Turkey's Asia Green IT System (AGIT). The future of the applications has remained uncertain for five years since ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) issued some non-consensus advice against them. The advice, however, was not unanimous and did not imply that it was the final rejection of the applications; the consideration was then postponed for an indefinite period.
Seeing no progress, AGIT representatives filed an appeal seeking an independent review process procedure, which took place in 2017 and recognized the registry's validity of a claim. ICANN had to pay all the expenses for the procedure which cost a total of $270,000 and to make a decision whether to delegate .ISLAM and .HALAL. One year later, the decision has been finally made.
The board's decision was certainly impacted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the group that combines 57 Muslim countries with a total of 1.6 billion residents, which objected to the delegation of the domains. Among those who objected were also several national governments - in particular, the UAE, Malaysia, Turkey, Iran, and India, which claimed that the notions 'Islam' and 'halal' are highly important for every Muslim - therefore, the corresponding domains can be delegated only by some global structure that respects the interests of all Muslims across the globe (for instance, OIC), and not by a small private company. ICANN board's resolution said the decision reflects core values of the corporation and is based on protecting public interests.
ICANN also decided against the application for delegating the .PERSIANGULF domain made by AGIT, Domain Incite said. Members of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) failed to reach a unanimous decision as well but for a different reason. Certain Arab countries are seeking to rename Persian Gulf, "Arabian Gulf", this however, is solidly opposed by Iran. It appears that ICANN has chosen not to get involved in the dispute. The taken decision is definitive; however, they may be disputed by AGIT through legal action.
