"Acquire knowledge and teach people. Learn along it with dignity, tranquility and humility for those who teach you. And humility for those whom you teach" - Umar ibn al-khattab

OUR STORY

Assalamualaikum / Hello, I'm Khairul Akmal, the founder of humblemuslim media,  a digital media and tech company in Malaysia. We produce a high quality printing, digital media and web/mobile development since 2016. I have worked in computer industry for almost 20 years. But I always have deep interest in islamic digital platform to help connect muslims around the world and  my venture started in 2008 when I created the first Islamic Search Engine.

The project name was "Ishalal - The islamic search engine". Ishalal means "I Seek Halal". It was a collaboration with PPIM (Malaysian consumer association) and received funding from MOSTI (Malaysia ministry of science and technology) under tech & innovation grant. It was completed in less than 1 year. Sadly I had to end the project later on because lack of funding to continue run, market and promote it.

My passion does not stop there, in 2013 when smartphone adoption is getting wider,  Islamic Apps suddenly piled up on top of each other, for every feature (eg: Prayer times, Qiblat compass, Digital tasbeeh) there will be hundreds of app for it. I saw a new opportunity and vision to reduce this fragmentation. Again, this was also a non-profit project. I built an app called Ishalal Guide that covers most of features (prayer time, qibla angle, halal verified products, searchable Quran and hadith from 6 major books, etc) that have appeared on Islamic apps and make it extremely easy to use.  But after many updates, it becomes clear to me that mobile app has 1 major limitation. Users need to update or even re-install completely everytime new major functions introduced.

Fortunately, in 2016 technology began to shift towards mobile messaging. Facebook introduced automated messaging support within it's Facebook Messenger app. So I quickly assembled my team and build my dream platform again from scratch. This is my biggest undertaking, to build a smart Islamic Messaging Assistant that can respond within your Facebook Messenger, providing multitude of features from local prayer time to simple facts (eg: wives of prophet). With this platform we can add and update features, data everyday, anytime and provides muslims around the world ever-expanding smart assistant.

Askmualim is the World's First Islamic Smart Assistant that connect to your messaging app. For now we have support for Facebook Messaging (Desktop and Mobile app) but more platform will come soon. Behind the scene is a large database and processing engines built from ground up so we can serve/answer many things you need.

Currently Askmualim is running in Beta, with most of functions enabled. Some of things you can do are:

1. Read Quran, search for Quran verses

2. Get local prayer time, either from GPS (globally) or local authority provided tables (only Malaysia supported for now)

3. Get qibla angle (actual map angle, not magnetic).

4. Find events around you.

5. Du'a (supplication)

6. E-ingredients information and status.

7. Nearby mosque or musollah.

8. Facts (eg: five pillars of islam)

COMMUNITY FEATURES

We have many features for social engagement in plan and already rolled out few such as Local Broadcast and Anonymous Chat.

1. Local Broadcast allow you to broadcast message to people around you. Very useful for announcements.

2. With anonymous chat, you can seek advice behind the curtain or just casual chat among muslims. This allow anybody to share knowledge without discrimination. Learn more about it here.

As you can see, alot of features already made available to public. Our agile development team will not stop here, we always listen to our fellow muslim brothers and sisters for improvement and feature requests. 

WHAT WE'RE ASKING FOR

As you can see this is a big undertaking. We so far able to sustain initial development and running cost. Currently Askmualim is running on development setup that only able to serve a handful of users at a time. But our target is bigger audience (the whole world), to properly server alot of users, we need to move Askmualim system to a better hardware architechture. And the amount we ask also to fund further development in plan such as more language coverage (currently only English and Bahasa Malaysia supported). This fund also will be helpful for us to develop another useful feature, that recommend sadaqah/infaq around you.

EXPECTED DELIVERY

Before Ramadhan 2018, we are aiming to serve muslims around the world during ramadhan.

STRETCH GOALS

Goal 1: $15,000

- Development of Classroom Authoring Tools and templates, allowing teachers/authors to create their own class/course ala Duolingo inside Askmualim. Teachers/authors can then charge their course for a small fee or give it for free.

- Add public api support (so other muslim projects can use our smart reply for their own apps).

Estimated delivery: August 2018 (yes, our team work very fast)

Goal 2: $20,000

- Voice assistant apps and devices support, starting with Amazon Alexa and later on Google Assistant.

Estimated delivery: TBD

RISK AND CHALLENGE

There are bound to be several risks and challenges in a project like this.

1. As our userbase expand, for instance, we will need to be able to handle thousands of concurrent requests and less down time. And also we need to monitor (but still provides privacy) our social features to avoid social abuse from one fellow muslim to another. We will build and enhance our system from time to time.

2. Cost to keep Askmualim running free forever. We figured a way to monetize some specific features to business users (don't be afraid, we promised you Askmualim will always be free for most of the features). But we do need your support in initial funding to realize all these.

SUPPORT US

Besides funding, We humbly request you to share this project/campaign with your friends, family and social networking sites. Also we appreciate your du'a for our success. You can reach us at our Facebook Page, message us or write a comment.

Part of this funding will go into Iftar during Ramadhan for selected Mosque. We are a very humble people, don't be afraid to reach us on Facebook.

Updated on 01/03/18: Revised stretched goals to benefit community better.