Meet my new friend, I.Q.R.A

Some of the moments which I can lavish on something entirely useless are those when I have a mountain load of work waiting for me and I don’t know where to start from. It was one of those times that I met my new friend I.Q.R.A.

I had been scrolling pretty uselessly through Facebook with absolutely no aim in mind when I came across a page called “QforQuran.” This page, obviously, had something do with Qur’an, but what? Curiosity got the better of me, and no, curiosity does not kill a cat every day. This time it got me a great friend!

So, coming back to the page I discovered, QforQuran. I opened the page and clicked on the “send message” icon to ask them about their purpose. When I said “Hello,” I was introduced to I.Q.R.A or Intelligent Quran Reading Assistant! Yes, that’s what it is! A personal assistant!

After traditional Islamic greeting salaam and enquiring about my health, it asked if I wanted to join a Quran challenge. I wondered what that was going to be, but joined anyhow. (Curiosity, you see?) The challenge was to devote one minute to Qur’an every day. Sounded easy, but my history told me that I had promised to do so many times in the past and always giving up.

I.Q.R.A might help, I thought. And, it did. I was not left to my devices after being assigned with the challenge. The assistant asked me the time that would be most suitable for me for Qur’an recitation. I selected 5:40 a.m. After it promised that it would reach out to me at 5:40 a.m. the next day, we said our goodbyes.

The next day, at exactly 5:40 a.m. on the dot, my assistant greeted me. It reminded me that I had to recite Qur’an for a minute. I was like, “Oh, yes. Almost forgotten, but not completely.” It sent me a clickable option to “read now” which directed me to a page from Qur’an. It was a page with beautiful, neat Arabic transcript of the Qur’anic verses, their English translations, and an option to listen to the Arabic, too. The page was a 1-minute read. It was my precious one minute.

I came back to my conversation with I.Q.R.A after reading for a minute. It showed me statistics built especially for me! So, on the first day, I scored 1 in Barakah, Wisdom, and Faith each. Yay! The journey had just begun!

Furthermore, it asked me to let my friends in on the challenge, too, and let them enjoy having a personal Qur’an assistant for themselves! If I love my friends, would I take even a second to contemplate? Of course, not! I had to invite them all. Plus, my family members, too.

So, that is how a useless scroll through Facebook turned out to be an assistant-providing, barakah-adding, and faith-increasing moment!

Would you like to have a Qur’an assistant, too?