Naveed Ahmed, 25, Faheem Ahmed, 22 and Suheel Dar, 23 all hailing from
Budgam who own UmmahTalk.com – a social networking website - developed
‘Muslim Chat and Discussions’ app to converge the different Islamic
groups into an online forum for propagation and understanding Islam.
The
application which has more than 10,000 active users from different
parts of the world was launched on the Google playstore on
April 25, 2017.
"Muslim Chat and
Discussions application is intended to provide Muslims around the world
with a platform to express view on Islam and for Non-Muslims to learn
more about the religion,” said Faheem Ahmed.
"Islam is a peaceful religion. The world needs to know the true teachings of Islam.”
Muslim Chat and discussion was born out of the hope to build a community based network.
Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and the potential of such an application was high.
"Friends
from Indonesia and Malaysia helped us translate the application into
Bahasa Indonesian and widely promoted the application there,” said
Suheel Dar.
"After success of the ummahtalk.com there, we decided to launch the application in Kashmir.”
The
team initially launched the UmmahTalk.com website for its Indonesian
and Malaysian users, but realizing their dream of building a Kashmir
based social network, they started to work on ‘Muslim Chat and
Discussions’ app primarily for the Kashmir based users.
"We always
wanted to build a Kashmir based network but we failed in our first
attempt because of the lack of resources,” said another co-developer of
the app Faheem Ahmed.
Despite internet ban in Kashmir, the number of downloads by local users have increased.
The app developers said Muslim youth are wasting time and resources on social media which prompted them to develop such an app.
"The
immoralities on social media influence their behavior. The launch of
this application was to provide an alternative that helps them
understand, practice and propagate Islamic values and teachings to the
wider audiences,” they said.
They said the youth are disconnected from the Islamic seminaries, risingkashmir.com reported.
"We
thought to reach out to them on internet. Our network is open to
Muslims and non-Muslims alike to understand and know the true teachings
of Islam,” said Suheel Dar.