IN Digestion

Every few weeks Fatima or I get a call from my mother, or an e-mail from her mother asking us to ‘put such and such up on Islamic Network.’ Nearly each time, it is one of those E-Mail forwards which we all Love to get (thanks Moms :)).

There is a specific demographic of Muslims whom love to ‘receive’ and ‘share’ Islamic Multimedia Presentations, and even though many of us tend to discard the e-mails and the persons who send and receive them, they have a tremendous effect on many people. In hopes of channeling Islamic Network into being a service that would appeal to all audiences (even them!) we wanted to create something which would be worthy of our parents sending out to all of their friends and family.

That is why we created Worship Allah Wherever You Are

Background

1. Fatima got ‘one of those e-mails’ (it was actually a very nice one)
2. Fatima saved all of the pictures and wanted to do ‘something’ with it.
3. Weeks later, we spoke about the phenomenon of how people love to send out e-mails, especially multimedia related matter (this was after getting one of the more unpleasant ones)
4. We decided we should try to do one (eventually we hope to make it more regular)
5. Fatima chose to make the first one based off of the e-mail we received earlier
6. I came up with the Name.
7. Fatima arranged the images in the correct sequence, while I prepared the opening and closing graphics
8. I animated it under Fatima’s direction

Adhan
When I was setting up a (dedicated) computer for my parents to call the adhan, I wanted to find an adhan that was spectacular. To date, the only description I have ever seen of this adhan is ‘by Bosnian Brother’. I pushed for it, and Fatima Approved. We tried to match the sound as well as we could – but in the end had to remove some of it.

Publishing
We did not send out an e-mail, nor ask anyone to. We wanted to see if people would send out the e-mails without us having instigated it in any way.

Did it work?
Within a few days, after checking the comments and our referrer log we noticed hundreds of referrals from people checking their respective mail services. There were tens of referrals from individuals who had linked to it on their forums, posts, blogs and websites. It worked!

Feedback
To date, it has received the most comments from any of our features (50 and counting) (read all), and from the referrals logs in this last week, it seems another mailing list has picked us up.The most amazing thing however was not that ‘it worked’ but rather – the comments we received. Here is a list of some of the more notable comments.

I loved this, I got it from a friend of mine n iam glad she sent it to me. It moved my heart so much i couldnt help the tears flowing down. Iam proud to be a mislim and everytime i c a muslim who has faith in Allah I feel so happy n i pray to Allah for them. — Idil

as-salam alaikum, at first i hesitated to even click on the link but decided to do so. masha’allah, it’s beautiful, touching and inspiring. i wish the whole world could see it. and insha’allah i plan to send it to my non-muslim family members. jazakum allah khayr — amal ibrahim

salaamu alaikum,i havent seen something like this before,maasha allah its so great so pleasing,so touching.i wish everyone could see it — Zahra Abdi

it was very touching picture, and how beautiful the sound of azan is, i cried while listening to the azan, may Allah blessed all muslims over the world. Allahuakbar — Arif Abdullah

Read the rest of them

There are many more. I was very surprised that something this simple would have the affect that it did. I was contemplating putting all of them up, because each and every one is special in its own way – but again, it’s amazing – that something like this can actually affect so many people – I guess that explains why our parents (and everyone else) are always forwarding e-mails to us.