As an estimated three million pilgrims have gathered yesterday on the plains of Arafat in Mecca for a key rite of Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage. Worldwide, around two billion Muslims are celebrating the holiday known as Eid Al Adha.

In this occasion ArabCrunch greets every Muslims worldwide: Eid Mubarak and may God bless you. And for our readers who are not Muslim, we say: Happy Saturated and may God guide you and us to the best.

You’ll find interesting information about the holiday of Eid-ul-Adha and about the Hajj at the following links.

-Eid-ul-Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice) is celebrated throughout the Muslim world as a commemoration of Prophet Ibrahim’s (PBUH) willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Eid-ul-Adha is celebrated on the tenth day of the month of Zul-Hijja.

-The Hajj, or pilgrimage to Makkah is a central duty of Islam whose origins date back to the time of Prophet Ibrahim (PBUH). It brings together Muslims of all races and tongues for one of life’s most moving spiritual experiences. For 14 centuries, countless millions of Muslims, men and women from all over the world, have made the pilgrimage to Makkah, the birthplace of Islam. In carrying out this obligation, they fulfill one of the five “pillars” of Islam, or central religious duties of the believer.
(source:�Ummah 2.o)

For more detailed explanations of the rich history and traditions of Islam, feel free to visit the following sites:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#pic from Aljazeera English.

Nearly 2.5 million Muslims begin the annual Islamic ritual of the Hajj today, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Hajj represents one of the five pillars of Islam; it requires all Muslims around the world who are able-bodied and can afford it to perform the pilgrimage once in their lifetime.

YouTube has partnered with Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information’ to live stream Hajj 2011. So now millions of people from around the world will be able to experience the event live on video. Here is the channel link: https://www.youtube.com/hajjlive

Last Ramadan Youtube live streamed prayers from Mecca for the first time.
and here is the live stream it self:



The website of a French weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo has been hacked the responsibility of the attack was taken by Turkish hackers in retaliation for posting insulting drawings of prophet Mohammad peace be upon him. The offices of the newspaper on question in paris was also burned down according to Aljazeera Arabic.

The newspaper that sells 60,000 issues decided in making Prophet Mohammad -PBUH- its editor in chief for its Wednesday edition to mark the winning of Al Nahda Islamic party in the Tunisian election and the statement by Libya’s interim rulers that the country would be ruled according to Islamic Sharia law.

One of the newspaper journalist said that the newspaper Facebook page will close after a massive peak of angry comments over insulting the prophet.

Tomorrow is Eid Al Fitr in most Muslims countries. In this occasion I send my greetings (see my Video below) to All Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim reader: Happy Eid, Eid Mubarak and May Allah accept from me and you. If you are not Muslim then I also wish you a happy Tuesday  :).

What Is Eid Ul Fitr?

Muslims celebrate ‘Eid ul Fitr on the first day of Shawwal — the tenth month of the Islamic calendar, following the month of Ramadhan (in which the revelation started and ended 20+ years later, and which is also the month of fasting). Following a Lunar calendar, Muslims mark the beginning of the month with the sighting of the new crescent.

The month long fasting of Ramadan culminates into the festival of ‘Eid-ul-Fitr (the Festival of Fast-Breaking). It is a festival of joy, family reunion and thanksgiving to Almighty God. The giving of a special charity for this occasion is obligatory. This is known as Zakat. Muslims dress in holiday attire, attend a special community prayer in the morning, and visit friends and relatives. Greetings of “‘Eid mubarak,” or “a blessed ‘Eid” are exchanged.
Eid Ul Fitr Prayer

:

Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. La ila-ha ill-lal-lah. Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. Wa-lilahill hamd. 

(Allah is great, Allah is great. There is no god but Allah. Allah is great, Allah is great. And all praises are for Allah).

Here are some links to websites that helps you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by creativesam,

Google has its ways to greet Muslims during Ramadan, it has announced that it is launching Makkah Live a channel that is  video live streaming from Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca during Ramadan. The live streaming is done in collaboration with Saudi culture and media ministry.

Tomorrow is the first day of Ramadan in many countries around the world. In this occasion we send our greetings to all Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim readers. and to our non Muslim readers of ArabCrunch we also wish you a happy month It is worth mentioning that Ramadan Kareem is trending on Twitter.

As with every year here are some links to websites that help you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by Sama.

As in most countries in the world Ramadan is one day to start. a new startup has emerged to provide Islamic mobile apps for all devices. which would be handy to help Muslims during the holly month.

Islamic Appstore provide Muslims direct access to thousands of Islam-oriented contents in different sections such as The Holy Quran, Ahadith, Prayers, Supplications, Ringtones, Wallpapers, nasheed… All what users need is to connect to www.islamicapp.com using their mobile, tablet or Smartphone browsers and start downloading various contents.

Islamic appstore is also available for Developers as they can start publishing their contents and apps using the developer portal.

As with every year at the time of Ramadan Yahoo! Maktoob has created the a Ramadan site, designed as a one stop destination that provides access to a host of rich spiritual, lifestyle, and entertainment content. The dedicated site (maktoob.ramadan.yahoo.com) brings together content relevant and not relevant to Ramadan, pulled from multiple leading Yahoo! Maktoob properties including News, Helwa, OMG!, Video on Demand, Forums and Search. The site also provides prayer and imsakieh times based on country and city.

“As the premier digital media company, we have created a premium online destination that brings together the best Ramadan content. We are selecting content that is relevant to this period from all of our popular properties, and packaging it in a way that gives users an experience that is both enjoyable and useful,” said Ahmed Nassef, Vice President and Managing Director, Yahoo! Middle East.

Yahoo Maktoob’s Ramadan site bring content from OMG! Arabic that brings all the news of celebrities during Ramadan which muslim clerks deem it as unislamic during Ramadan.

Yahoo Maktoob Video on Demand is also re-launching with a new video content, with over 500 hours of video, including popular TV shows, Islamic shows, cooking, and news. Helwa, the region’s leading women’s property, brings Ramadan related content with over 16,000 recipies under its Kitchen/Recipes content section.

Ramadan Games, a dedicated sub section from Yahoo! Maktoob Games, includes puzzles, a Qatayef making game and other cooking games. The site is also host to a full Ramadan TV guide, where people can log on to find out what the latest shows on all regional TV channels.

In the spirit of the sharing aspect of Ramadan, the Yahoo! Maktoob Ramadan site offers a free SMS service to all users enabling them to send Ramadan greetings to family and friends direct to their mobiles. Users can send up to 3 SMS per day and can choose from a pre-defined SMS template or customize their SMS message.

For users on the go this Ramadan, the new mobile application provides feeds from the Yahoo! Maktoob Ramadan site including, prayer times, TV guide, OMG!, and more.

The new site is also running a competition encouraging users to share their personal experiences and how they celebrate Ramadan by submitting uploads in the form of write-ups, photos or videos. Winners will be based on community votes, with a chance to win iPads.

Google shows snippet of movies show times in many countries in its search resluts, today google announced that it launched Islamic Prayer Times in search results highlighted from pages across the web.

Google says this feature will be available on all domains for searches in English and Arabic. This feature uses Google’s Rich Snippets technology, which also powers improved search results for other kinds of information like events, profiles, recipes, reviews.

Testing the service in Amman, Jordan it did not work, maybe it needs a day or 2 to work.

Inside Facebook released few days ago its Inside Facebook Gold report, with data about membership and usage across the number 1 social networking site in the world Facebook.

The report reveals the shift of Facebook population of more than 500 million users, from being dominated by US citizens and English speaking people to more of an international play ground.

According to the report Arabic had the highest growth rate in August with around 18%  followed Portuguese by around 11%, this is due to the increasing number of Brazilian coverts from Google’s social network Orkut to Facebook, as Facebook is showing strong growth in Brazil.

As for Arabic, despite that its high growth rate it is still the smallest of the top 10 languages, holding around 1%. Our source inside Facebook informed us few months ago that Facebook users from the Arab world stands at around 16-18 million users ( we will update you soon with the latest numbers.)

English has dipped from holding 50% of languages on Facebook to 47.95%. The second language was spanish with 14.43%, then French with 5.26%, Turkish makes the 4th largest language on Facebook with 4.66%, while the largest Muslim country in terms of population Indonesia holds the 5th rank with 4.44%.

That also means that  3 languages moslty spoken by Muslims ( Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic) make around 11% of facebook users holding the 3rd place ahead of French, which implies that facebook has to be more concerned about Muslims feelings with provocative stuff such as (draw Mohammad -peace be upon him- day on facebook) as someone like Millatfacebook might eat the lunch.

This shift in Facebook population, also means that facebook is eating users from Google and Yahoo at the international level, which is a good news for Facebook and International social marketers alike, as ads on Facebook now can be targets to specific languages not just English.

#via insidefacebook.

As we enter the 9th day of the holly month of Ramadan, Quran Links pops up as  a new site in English and Arabic for Muslims and interested non-muslims  offerring classified guide to Islamic and Quran related web sites. Visitors can suggest a new site, rate and add comments on an existing listed site. But the site already boost a number of Quran related sites in tags such as Video, Mp3, Quran Interpretation and so on.

Quran Links owners say that the site is not for profit, does NOT belong to any political or any particular denomination. It’s developed by SADAF Technology Development from Gaza, Palestine, and is managed by a team of volunteers.

Yesterday was the first day of the holy month of Ramadan in some Muslims countries, and today it is the first day of Ramadan for the rest of the world. In this month all Muslims are obliged to fast from eating, drinking and having sex , from dawn to sun set.

In this occasion we send our greetings to all Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim readers. and to non Muslim readers of ArabCrunch we also wish you a happy August .

Here is our Greeting Video: Ramadan Entrepreneurship and Clinton:




As with every year here are some links to websites that help you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by Sama.

Microsoft’s Bing the only real solid competitor to Google in search engines has started celebrating the holly month of Ramdan in its own way with impressive background images such as this one:

and this one:

Google usually uses it doodle to celebrate different occasion but nothing for this Ramadan.

The holly Month of Ramdan is where Muslims fast from Dawn to Sunset from food, water and sex ( if they are married), it is the month of fighting any type of temptation, remembering the poor and becoming closer to God.

In this occasion ArabCrunch wishes all its Muslims readers Ramadan Kareem, as for non Muslims we say “happy August”, ArabCrunch Ramdan Video Message coming next.

Thank you Microsoft.

After Nokia’s launch of mobile  Ramadan 2010 specific  applications, Yahoo Maktoob announced today launching a new Ramadan website, the micro site includes three main sections “spiritualities”, “ramadan and People” and “entertainment.” The Muslims month of Ramadan is expected to start this week.

The new site will introduce a number of features including downloads for Ramadan-specifc screen sever and wallpapers, ramadan news feed via the web and desktop gadgets and a new Ramadan contest and a TV guide. Also Yahoo’s recently announced Video On Demand Channel (VOD) will be available for users to use for free on the TV guide. Yahoo said on a press release that VOD has Ramadan “related” videos and shows.

Ramadan site also includes a section to the Quran with full interpretation, where users can mark when the stopped so they can sign-in next tome to continue where they stopped. The Quran sections also comes with “tajweed” which helps people read Quran verses according the Islam’s rules of reading the Quran.

The site also has something for women and family with content such as health and beauty, fatwa related to women issues and cooking tips.

Yahoo Maktoob is also offering free SMS services that allows users to send free SMS messages to congratulate their family and friends on Ramadan and Eid.

Ahmed Nassef VP and Managing Director of Yahoo Middle East said that the Ramdan website is part of Yahoo’s effort to be at the center of people’s online lives.

The site is in Arabic and can be accessed from here.

Update:1 Omer Zaheer Meer CEO of Millatefacebook said the site now boost 334,000 members.

Update2: the site url is millatfacebook.com ( double LL) Milatfacebook.com is not the  original Millat which achieved 334,000 members and faced DDoS attacks. It is a new site that seems want to take advantage of Millatfacebook popularity.

Update 3: Millatfacebook site seems some time sluggish.

After being down for around 3 weeks, Millatfacbook the Pakistani social network for Muslims is now back online.

Millatfacebook has emerged in what it calls to “Unite Muslims” and boycott facebook in light of the heinous facebook fan page of “draw the Prophet Mohammad day.”

Millatefacebook accused the CIA and “Israel” of launching a DDoS attacks against them, they also accused Yahoo! and what they called “Zionest facebook” of plotting to destroy them.

Today, I finally managed to register to see the site and add my profile profile here, the social network looks ok and it has many of the features that facebook has, it seems that it is build using an open source socialnetwork platform using PHP.

this is the original Millatefacebook ( double L) UI:

This is Millatfacebook clone Milatfacebook with one L UI:

The site design is not that great and needs improvements, however if Milatfacebook team needs to make this project a success they need to add and resdign the site features and create something different and more appealing “socially” than what they offer now. For example forums is an outdated being from the 90s era.

It is good to see a Muslim social network competing against facebook and it is also healthy to see even anyone from anywhere competing with facebook. As facebook is now 500 Million strong this hopefully  would put pressure on facebook management to respect users privacy and make sure that  groups that insults Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) has no sanctuary on facebook. I am with freedom of speech and with free flow of information, but the case here is different than freedom of speech, Me As a Muslim allow me to tell you that Islam allows non Muslims to believe in whatever they want, non Muslims has the right to discuss if Islam is truly from God or not, believe in God or not, but Prophet Mohammad and all the prophets of God should be respected, why do you want to insult Prophet Mohammad? Essentially those people who started these competition have deep hate to Islam and they should differentiate on their hate between Prophets of God ( whether they believe on them or not) in one side and political and military leaders or movements on the other side.

Again if you missed, ArabCurnch has no political or religious affiliations. In fact people (Muslims and non Muslim)  from  different back grounds and colors from USA, Europe, Africa and Asia have worked or volunteered, interned or supported ArabCrunch  in one way or another.  ArabCrunch is focused on tech, startups, innovation, social media and mobile and not a political blog but sometimes politics are mixed with tech.

We do not know where Millatfacebook is being hosted, they said in previous communicated email that they will be hosted with 2 Pakistani Telecom companies. Hosting a site in a Muslim country is not a safe haven, as free speech in political issues are not granted, for example criticizing any head of state in most Muslim countries will mean impressment for the person if it is not being wiped out from the face of earth. That is why it will be hard see any Internet or Media startup located in the Muslim world that provides complete freedom of speech, otherwise it would be not for profit and its founder unknown to the public.

Freedom of speech is more granted in USA and Western countries with some variation between them than most Muslim countries, Pakistan though has some how more political freedoms including speech than the most other Muslim countries.

#Edited.

The after math of “Draw Mohammad PBU Day on Facebook“, continues to unfold, first Pakistani court ordered to block facebook and then the ban was lifted. Pakistani developers launched Millatfacebook as a Muslim friendly alternative to facebook, the site however  seems under DDoS attack and blamed facebook, CIA, Israeli IPs, and Yahoo of plotting against it.

Things escalated further as Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General has launched a criminal investigation against the CEO of facebook Mark Zuckerberg, which might lead  to Mark being sentenced the death Penalty.

If Mark loses the case he will be charged under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code which states:

Use of derogatory remark etc, in respect of the Holy Prophet, whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable for fine.

“petitioner Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque said he’s waiting for the police to contact Interpol about making arrangements for the arrest of Facebook’s owners” said  ProPakistani  website. The site also said that the Deputy Attorney General told the High Court that Pakistan’s United Nations representative has asked to escalate the issue in the UN General Assembly.

Facebook has been under big public and media scrutiny  for privacy matters.
Via: theregister & propakistani.pk.

#Mark Pic via his FB page.

Update: CIA/Mossad and The Global Zionist also Attacked ArabCrunch.

Millatfacebook the social netwoprking site for “Muslims and nice, decent and sophisticated people of all religions and faiths” as the site said and was launched according to its founders as a response to “ Draw Mohammad PBU competiion in facebook,” has been down in the last week or so after  achieving over 333,000 members 15 Days as the site said.

In the website and via an email sent to its email list, Millatfacebook accused Mark Zuckerberg’ the CEO of what they called ”Zionist” facebook of putting presure on US hosting companies to block the site.

Mark Zuckerberg belongs to the Jewish religion. but that does not mean we agree with what Millatfacebook is accusing facebook or anyone with, we are just reporting and I hate politics.

Millatfacebook also accused the CIA and “Israel”IPs of launching a contsant DDoS attack against them saying:

“Constant DDOS Attacks on Millat including from Israeli and CIA owned IP’s (YES ……… We have them logged and the proofs)” They also said they got “Personal Threats to the Millat Administration”

DDoS attacks are attempts to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users by flooding it with fake requests making website unavailable to legitimate traffic. DDoS attacks are one of the most dangers online attacks as they shut down mega sites such as Twitter and made facebook unstable before. At ArabCrunch.com we have been since April under DDoS attack which caused our site of going down for around 3 days.

Millatfacebook also accused Yahoo which owns now the Arab portal Maktoob of refusing to deliver any emails containing MILLATFACEBOOK.COM .The homepage of Milatfacebook writes:

“Yahoo is blocking our emails stating that “your website contain offensive content” They think uniting Muslims is offensive, this is their double standards. Pray that we succeed against these evil enemies and unite our Ummah as One Millat and show them “Yes We Can”..

This is very strange that Mark’s Facebook which allow and supports RIDICULE of Holy Prophet (SAWW) is not objectionable but Millatfacebook.com which prohibits the ridicule of any faith and offers a very decent environment is” Objectionable” …………”

The  Pakistani based startup said they decided to move their hosting to any Islamic country Russia or China and promsied not to surrender.

We have contacted Yahoo and facebook for response and will updated if we get or did not get any respond.

#Images Milatfacebook website.

It did not take long for Pakistani/Indian Muslim geeks to hit back on facebook after the deep unpleasant feelings by many over the facebook group that call for a competition to Draw the prompt Mohammad Peace be upon him.

But they hit back with Millatfacebook, a facebook like social network for Muslims and “nice, decent and sophisticated people of all religions and faiths, to come together and make a network. They should interact in a way that is socially responsible by providing them all the freedom of expression, however respecting each others’ sentiments, sensitivities and beliefs. ” as the site says.

Pakistani entrepreneur Omer Zaheer Meer, CEO of Millatfacebook, told hindustantimes ” We requested Facebook to remove the offending pages but they did not even bother to reply,” so instead he launched his new startup.As the site says:

“A small group of young IT professionals who were very keen users of Facebook developed this idea when Facebook seems to allow mockery of the most sacred person of Islam, the prophet Muhammad (Sallal-la-ho-Alaihe-Wa-aalehe-Wasallam). A competition was announced on facebook and the blasphemous caricatures of the prophet Muhammad (Sallal-la-ho-Alaihe-Wa-aalehe-Wasallam) were uploaded, and instead of taking any consideration and action, they supported it candidly.

“After the announcement of the commencement date of this excruciating incident on facebook we all saw hundreds of the protesting Muslims around the world who all together failed to make facebook stop that irreligious event and they made Muslim Millat bear that extreme pain. We all have experienced the so called “freedom of expression” the statement which they produce when ever any question is raised to them. They never let go this freedom of expression when it comes to the Holocaust, or racism, and honor this statement, but when it comes to the Muslim faith, they never.”

According to Hindustannews, In 11 days the site managed to attract thousands of members, who seem fired-up by Facebook. Even though facebook promised to “respect Islam” and deleted the offending group.

Millatfacebook look like having many of the current features that facebook has, however I could not finish my signup process since the site requires verifications via email and until this moment I did not get the email. The site nots claims “Yahoo is blocking any incoming/outgoing email which contains millatfacebook.com, ” we do not know if Goolge is blocking with its gmail.

#Thanks Mo’men Mohamed for the tip. Via Allfacebook

Some dude who started around 2 weeks ago a fan page competition for Drawing Prophet Mohammad peace be upon him has sparked anger among Muslims and managed to have Pakistan to block Facebook, youtube and other 450 Web links for carrying objectionable material.

But today a Pakistani court ordered the government to left a ban on Facebook,after Facebook “assured the court no blasphemous material will be available to users in Pakistan.” According to bloomberg.

Facebook “had exchanges with Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” Chaudhry Zulfiqar, told Bloomberg.

Startupmeme a famous Pakistani blog about startups and social media called this day a “Let May 31 Go Down As D-Day In Pakistan’s History [BS]” , Startupmeme writer asked before  facebook to delete the fanpage because is it against it terms of service (TOS).

In Islam creating images of the Prophet is prohibited and considered a great insult.

Facebook has been some how respectful to Muslim feelings, they deleted before a fanpage in Arabic for a couple of Guys claiming them selves as “Allah” ( Allah: means one God in Arabic)

#Photo by Startupmem.

As  many Muslims strive to live according to Islam in their life and in their daily commercial dealings in the west and in non Muslim countries, a number of Muslim entrepreneurs provided the needed services via a number of useful websites.

Here is a list of 6 sites providing guides for Halal Restaurants, Muslims Friendly Hotels, Mosques and Islamic centers, videos and virtual community.

This list can also be useful for Jews as the food code are similar.

1-Muslim friendly hotels: HalaTrip

Offers Muslims and Jewish users (since many religious restrictions are shared between both religion.) Reviews for hotels around the world, from things such as: if there is a women-only pool or not, if the hotel does not serve Alcohol, if the hotel has a prayer room, plus the location of the hotel on google maps.

The founder of HalaTrip is Karim Saad who lives in Austria you can follow HalaTrip on ArabCrunch.NET here.

2-Halalfire Media LLC, headquartered in San Carlos, California is the home of one of the largest Muslim networks on the Internet, claiming over 27 million page views and over 7.25 million unique visitors annually.

3-Masjed and Islamic centers guide: Salatomatic:

Offers the largest list of Mosqoues and Islamic centers around the world. Useful site when you travel and want to find masjeeds to pray Jumaa. Besides offering basic info and the location of each masjeed. Salatomatic offers interesting facts about the availability of  near by parking and so on. Users can also leave their feedback and even follow the masjeed.

The site also has an iPhone app that returns a list of restaurants, markets, and mosques near you. with sharing information, reading reviews, retrieving contact information capabilities, and provides driving directions. The site also has plans for Windows Mobile ,android, BlackBeery and Palm Pre apps. (iPhone app price: : US$2.99.)

3-Zabihah: halal food guide worldwide.

From the same mother company of Salamatoc, Halalfire Media, Zabihah the site lists halal restaurants, groceries, business mosques and schools. The site offers a profile of each restaurant with basic info such cuisine type, halal authenticity, price, payment accepted, hours, phone, website and map location.
The site boost 3866 Restaurants, 2200 Markets, 171 Products  and 35084 Reviews.

4- halalapalooza: Halal e-commerce guide.

Also form HalalFire, halalapalooza is a comprehensive directory of Islamic e-commerce website categorized in: Multimedia, General stores, clothing, travel, cards and gifts, foods and Snacks, Charities and Children’s Item.

5-muxlim: Muslim life style.

Finland  based  startup covered on AC before, was originally a blogging  and a social network  platform, but recently it focused more into syndicating content with relevance to Muslims from around the web.

6- Halaltube:

A video sharing site that focus is primarily on Islamic lectures, users can post content from youtube and google video.

If you are a Twitter user, there is a high chance that there are a lot of people you care about who are not using Twitter yet, at least in my case mom and dad!

But, almost everyone uses email, if you wanted to to keep them updated with your tweets or some of them, Tweet To Email is the solution. launched last night, the app is very simple to use, you create a new account, setup groups that contains the email addresses of people you want to keep them updated selectively and then you just add a short hash-tag to your tweets whenever you want to target a certain group of people) as each group has its own hashtag example: #TM1

The app also saves you time from manually adding emails by auto importing your address boook if you authorize it to.

Tweet To Email founder Ali bin Yahia told ArabCrunch that if anyone sends a #TN1 tweet with hashtag it wont get to your list unless that tweet comes from your Twitter handel.

Ali who is originally from Yeman and lives in United Arab Emirates (UAE) added that he plans to add more free and paid features for websites and blogs like RSS email subscription widget and a free Blackberry (BB) application that can send your tweets to your BB contacts,

You can follow Tweet To Email on ArabCrunch.NET here. Cool startup i will use it to email any Tweet or Retweet stuff I find important to some close contacts.

Last week, the talk among many facebook Arabic users is the fake fanpage with the title “Allah” which means in Arabic “One God.”

The group creator/s was dispatching status updates claiming that he is God and asking people to ask him for forgiveness! Also the creator was publishing his own altered form of some Versus of the Quran making fun of Islam, God and his messenger Mohammad!

The fan page managed to get around 600,000 thousand and that fake “God’s” each status update had around 5,000 comments most cursing the publisher.

Moreover, Arab and Muslim facebook user mobilized and started campaigns to Boycott Facebook with groups and fanepages such as this one and this one and this one.

A number of  Arab main stream media out lets did not stay shy about reporting  and discussing the issue, Halima Muthafer from Saudi Al Watwan wrote (arabic link) that she felt so shocked with the person who passed the Pharaoh in his arrogance and asked Saudi Telecom regulators to battle facebook instead of battling blackberry! She also said that Muslims and Christens are united in this issue.

It seems that facebook deleted the fake “god” fanpage yesterday.

iPhoneIslam the pioneering iPhone applications startup from Egypt that is best known for Arabizing the iPhone and developing Yahoo!Maktoob’s iPhone Dictionary app, has launched today a stunning free Quran app called ” Al Mushaf ” available on iTunes Store.

Al Mushaf makes you feel like reading the Quran on a real physical Quran; it gives you a very realistic hands-on experience of flipping a paper-book by simply dragging the pages corner. It also has natural paper behavior and natural page reflection, shadows and realistic paper sound effects.

The app which is only available in Arabic comes with a number of other features: Suras Index, Bookmarking, No waiting or page loading, 200% zoom mode, Landscape read mode with full page so no scrolling, shake your device on any page for fast index page, and screen shots.

iPhoneIslam says Al Mushaf is designed for reading the Quran the same way you read it physically as such it has no support for searching, iQuran iPhone app from award winning startup Guidedways and the makers of Faces and Squeezer has an advanced search feature plus English translation of the Quran and recitation by Sheikh Husary.

Al Mushaf is compatible with iPhone and iPod touch requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later, the app size is 200 MB. Other Quran app for iPhone devices includes Quran Reader from Batoulapps.

Al Mushaf is built using iFlipePage Engine an engine developed by iPhoneIslam to transform any book into an e-book.

( Thanks to Zamil Safwan for the heads up and for testing the app.)
Update: here is a video of how the app works:




Updated.

imHalal the a new search engine for Muslims that went live on September 1s.t during the Islamic month of Ramadan has achieved popularity in very short time with around 800,000 visits since its launch.

The new search Engine was which developed by ZSMedia Group a Dutch based startup founded by Reza Sardeha a Kuwaiti-Iranian, uses an opt-in filter to search results that are deemed unilsamic,. The search engine aims to prevent you from “accidentally” bumping into “explicit” content.
So for example if you search for “britney spears” you get a warning message in the result:

“Oops! Your search inquiry has a Haram level of 1 out of 3. This means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com could be haram! ”
However there is a message at the end that says, “If you still think the results will be clean click me!”

iHalal usess what it calls a Haram Rating System, which is based in a two layers of filtering: the first filter analyzes the world wide web and only retainers clean results. The second filter the one that triggers the Haram rating system.

Reza explained to ArabCrunch via email how the Haram Rating system works:

”

When you get a Haram warning of 1 out of 3 this means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com could potentially contain explicit content but if you think the results will be clean you still can continue your search.

When you get a Haram warning of 2 out of 3 this means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com probably will contain explicit content but if your really sure your search will return clean results you can continue your search.

Last but most certainly not least when you get a Haram warning of 3 out of 3 this means that the search results will most certainly contain sexual explicit content and so you can’t continue your search and you are advised to try another search inquiry.”

imHalal pitch its system as designed to facilitate several purposes such as functioning as a warning system, child protection system and to inform Muslims and or Non-Muslims what is supposed to be “Haram” or not according to the Islamic Law.

The search engine counters those who claim that the system is being “a dangerous tool since we are a heavily censored search engine” by saying that they only heavily censor pornographic content and that there is no censorship just content filtering, where the search engine warns you but still you are in charge to determine if you want to see the full results or not.

As for people like the extreme secular Jordanian blogger Ahmad Humeid the cofounder of Toot Corp the company behind iKbis and WatWet, who insults the people behind imHalal on his blog post by calling them “the fanatics / forces of darkness / narrow-minded crazies,” and describes the systems as “it supposedly only returns results in line with some ultra conservative/fanatic interpretation of Islamic teachings.”  Reza replies by saying “Obviously Ahmed hasn’t even tried ImHalal.com and unfortunately Ahmed is ignorant and really doesn’t know what ImHalal.com is all about.  We advice people like Ahmed to visit our blog at: www.imhalal.com/blog so that they can inform themselves before they conclude certain things.”

Reza told ArabCrunch that he got imHalal idea when he was talking about search engines with a couple of his friends where the conversation inspired him “since the conclusion of our discussion was that once in a while accidentally you could bump into explicit content on search engines like Google even though safe search is on. So then we thought we can create a better search engine tailor made for Muslims.”

Reza has more ambitious project for imHalal as he said that he is planning to roll out more extra services like Islamic Widgets, news feeds and that his startup is in the process of making a ImHalal game.

imHalah is self funded but looking for a capital injection, the startup is run by 4 people and uses Bing and Yahoo to do the actual search as Reza told me ( I will update you here in how they use them.) The top 3 countries for imhalal.com in terms of visits are: Turkey, India and Pakistan

Other websites that specialize in “clean” Islamic content include Gummah which like iHalah in search and NaqaaTube an Arabic site that filter content from Youtube Videos deemed unislamic in accordance with “Ahel El Suna Wa El Jamma.” and away from forcing ” extremism or fanaticism ” as the website says.

Update: Reza told me they use Yahoo! BOSS (Build your Own Search Service)  it is Yahoo!’s open search web services platform. Where Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure.

Unfortunately BOSS might die with Yahoo’s Suicidal Deal with Microsoft in which Bing will power Yahoo’s search .

Today is Eid Al Fitr in most Muslims countries. In this occasion I send my greetings (see my Video below) to All Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim reader: Happy Eid, Eid Mubarak and May Allah accept from me and you. If you are not Muslim then I also wish you a happy Sunday .

What Is Eid Ul Fitr?

Muslims celebrate ‘Eid ul Fitr on the first day of Shawwal — the tenth month of the Islamic calendar, following the month of Ramadhan (in which the revelation started and ended 20+ years later, and which is also the month of fasting). Following a Lunar calendar, Muslims mark the beginning of the month with the sighting of the new crescent.

The month long fasting of Ramadan culminates into the festival of ‘Eid-ul-Fitr (the Festival of Fast-Breaking). It is a festival of joy, family reunion and thanksgiving to Almighty God. The giving of a special charity for this occasion is obligatory. This is known as Zakat. Muslims dress in holiday attire, attend a special community prayer in the morning, and visit friends and relatives. Greetings of “‘Eid mubarak,” or “a blessed ‘Eid” are exchanged.
Eid Ul Fitr Prayer

:

Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. La ila-ha ill-lal-lah. Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. Wa-lilahill hamd. 

(Allah is great, Allah is great. There is no god but Allah. Allah is great, Allah is great. And all praises are for Allah).

Here are some links to websites that helps you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by creativesam,