Скачать или смотреть App helps travelling Muslims find a place to pray

(17 Apr 2018) LEADIN:
Travelling Muslims can always find a place to pray, thanks to an app by a London-based tech wizard.
Ikbal Hussain is the founder of Islamic GPS which helps users find mosques wherever they are in the world.
STORYLINE:
Need to find a mosque in a strange city? There's an app for that.
Ikbal Hussain is the founder and inventor of Islamic GPS and today he's looking for a place to pray, close to London's High Holborn.
A few clicks of the app and directions are revealed to a nearby mosque.
Islamic GPS was inspired by problems Hussain experienced while visiting Istanbul.
"I was looking for places to pray. Because I'm quite new to the city it was quite hard to find and because of the language barrier it was quite, it took me time to find it," he says.
"So I thought to myself: why not create (an app for) places to pray."
The big benefit of his app is that it can help users get to hard-to-find locations.
Today, the directions are taking Hussain down a series of narrow streets and alleys that only locals would know about.
The app is aimed at travellers: Hajj pilgrims or simply Muslims on holiday.
Islamic GPS has around 50,000 registered users, mainly from Indonesia but with a good following in the UK and USA too.
And Hussain says there are peak times when the app gets a lot of traffic.
"We get more high usage during Friday because of Friday Jummah," he says.
"We had a lot of daily usage in Hajj pilgrimage time, because we've also got in our app Ziyarah section, where the category puts all the historical things that you need to visit, places, and give you the facts and figures as well."
Islamic GPS was launched in November 2016.
It's one of a string of apps aimed at the Muslim market: prayer apps, Halal food apps, fashion and even dating apps are available.
Arfah Farooq, co-founder of Muslamic Makers, a Muslim tech community, says it means you can "have your religion in your pocket".
And she sees technology as a useful tool for connecting with Islam while navigating the modern world.
"One of the reasons why I guess Muslims embrace it is because it enables them in this life that we have which is so busy, to kind of constantly try and improve themselves as a Muslim, as they go day-to-day, living life," Farooq says.
Islamic GPS is available in numerous countries across the world.
Here in Lebanon it can take users to the Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque or a whole range of other mosques and heritage sites.
Hussain spent time honing the app and its design: he tested a prototype on around 600 people before launching it, and took advice from mentor Rooful Ali.
Ali is the founder of a Muslim networking group and says Muslims are finding lots of business opportunities related to their faith.
"I think the main thing people are almost identifying is there are potential gaps in the economy, in terms of there are products and services which people are crying out for which aren't being served by the mainstream," he says.
"As a result, there are two options really. One is obviously knock on the doors of the mainstream, big household brands, or the other thing is take on the challenge themselves, become an entrepreneur, collaborate and solve those problems."
Hussain's short walk has been a success: the app has brought him to the doors of Holborn Mosque.
Islamic GPS has proved itself as a tool for those who want a place to pray.
But Hussain has plans to develop it further with the help of virtual reality technology.
"There's in China an old mosque, about 100 years-old mosque there. You can't visit it, but you can at least (be) able to view it on the VR headset," he says.

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