The raging controversy about ‘azaan’ on loudspeakers muted many believers of peace. In the backdrop of the protests, a group of four third-year IT undergraduate students of Maharashtra College began creating ‘Al-Islaah’, an azaan (call to prayer) app for the Muslim community. Launched on Wednesday, it’s the first live-streaming app for the city, available on both android and iOS platforms.
Developed by the students at the college’s incubation centre (Maha CARE, Centre for Acceleration of Research and Entrepreneurship), Al-Islaah will be used by Juma Masjid in Crawford market. An incubation centre is a workspace created to offer start-ups and new ventures access to various resources under one roof.
Feeling proud of his students, college principal Sirajuddin Chougle said, “The centre gives students a practical platform to display their talents and use them to create new ventures. I encourage everyone to make use of such opportunities and excel in their future endeavours.”
One of the students, Tanveer Khan said that the app will alert users five times a day. “Devotees can customise the notifications as per their convenience. The app will also send out notifications regarding the masjid and other community related matters. It also has a 360 degree view of the masjid and a link to a documentary about it.” Khan said the group will try to connect other community members to mosques in their vicinity in the updates to the app.
Maha CARE director Saima Shaikh called it a memorable day for the team and said that the students took over two months to develop the app.
Shaikh said, “It’s a solution for those who can’t hear the daily azaan because of the loudspeaker issue. Now the azaan itself will reach every household.”
The app is connected to the Juma Masjid, and alerts it’s users regarding the live azaan or call to prayer (five times a day). The users can customise the azaan notifications according to their convenience. The app will also be used to send out notifications to the public regarding the Masjid and other community related notifications. The app also has a 360 degree view of the Juma Masjid and a link to a documentary of the Masjid.
“In the further updates of the app, we are going to try and connect the community members with the Masjid which is within their vicinity. This will become more convenient and the app will grow further,” added Khan.
Speaking about the app, Maha CARE director Saima Shaikh, said, "Today was a memorable day for team Maha CARE as it launched the Al-Islaah app at Juma Masjid. The students of TYBScIT have developed it and it took us around 2.5 months for it."
"This app is a solution for many people who were not able to hear the daily azaan because of the loudspeaker issue. Now the azaan has reached every household and we have made sure the app is user friendly as it is going to be used by people of all age group," she added.
