By Yamuna Ismail

In our busy life, few of us are able to take time out to spare a few minutes to devote ourselves to the Qur’an. But as the saying goes these days, we have an app for this! Yes, it’s a real thing. This app was developed by a medical doctor over the period of a few years and is especially for the busy teenager/professional in today’s world. Quran Blueprints serves as a Qur’an comprehension, reflection, and memorization tool. Dr Fahmy used a scientific approach in writing his content for the app. He took into account the patterns that people form in their minds to enhance their memories and thus formed Reflection Points, a key feature of this app and what differentiates it to everything else out there, thus helping accomplish all three of its goals: comprehending the Qur’an as it was intended to, reflecting on it to better pay heed to Allah’s message (tadabbur), and lastly, memorizing it so that we may insha’Allah rise in ranks in the akhirah.

 As a Qur’an comprehension tool, the app serves to be of interest to 3 levels of users: beginners just discovering their interest in learning the Qur’an, intermediate users who’ve been on this path for a while now and are familiar with Arabic words and phrases, and more advanced users who would just like to stay in touch with what they already know. For the first group, word-to-word translations have been incorporated in the form of a link at the beginning of each surah. This aims to lessen the burden of memorizing all the words as you go and instead allows one to enjoy their recitation while learning at their own pace. With regards to the second category of intermediate users, the app has supplementary hyperlinks to enable such a user to read the Qur’an from an external source without need for the word-to-word translation, specifically, content developed by the King Saud University. For the advanced user, QBP enables one to fine-tune their Qur’anic Arabic by simultaneously engaging their senses of hearing and sight. Each ayah has an audio clip attached to it, enabling you to listen to each Arabic verse as you read through its corresponding English translation.

As for being a Qur’an reflection tool, this is where it gets a bit more scientific. Dr Fahmy uses ‘Verse Sets’ to group together ayahs with a similar meaning—summarizing the main content within these sets of ayahs, and as mentioned before, ‘Reflection Points’ which serve as memory triggers through mind mapping word patterns. As a result of this effort, if one is simply looking for a dash of inspiration but may not have time to go through the Qur’an with translation, they may simply go to an ayah and read and ponder over it with the reflection points that follow. If further clarification is required, the Arabic of each ayah is incorporated into the app along with links to the word-to-word translation, as inferred previously, and with translations of entire ayahs, from Sahih International—just so you don’t need to fret about the authenticity of what you are reading!

When it comes to assisting one for memorizing the Qur’an with full comprehension and reflection, QBP breaks the surah down into smaller parts to organize one’s memorization by content. As stated in the QBP Manual, “instead of allotting a page or an arbitrary number of verses a day to memorise, you can use a ‘Reflection Point’ and its associated verses as starting and stopping points in your memorization.” This enables one to memorize a surah by completing a specific Reflection Point, allowing one to categorize their memorization by subject matter without having to make that extra effort of grouping ayahs together because this is already done for you! This enables one to make better sense of what’s being memorized and thus continues to motivate the seeker—for how can one stop when they are engrossed in understanding Allah’s Words to us? Every ayah, every word that is being read is meant for you. It’s wholly relatable because the Qur’an is timeless, and therefore, addictive.  QBP aims to make you realize that memorizing the Qur’an is not just a singular act—it’s a process of transforming your life by living out the Qur’anic Message from your Creator.

What Dr Fahmy intends to clarify, however, is that this app is not a tafseer. It derives commentary from Maududi where necessary (such as when a bit of a historical/geographical background is needed for some verses) but is not devised with the intention of trying to explain the meanings of the verses of Allah’s Book. As extracted from the QBP Manual, “Quran Blueprints is as its name implies—simply a tool designed to help your memory retain a structured overview of an entire surah such that when you hear the imam reciting a surah or you yourself are reciting a surah during salah then you have an idea of what the surah is about, how it progresses in its content as well as the fundamental lessons, points, stories, commandments etc present in the surah.” The blueprint will help you get the gist of each surah in a way like never before, and will thus make your jama’ah prayers such as taraweeh or qiyaam with an Imam more engaging and subsequently, enjoyable, insha’Allah.

While the app is immensely useful and can transform our relationship with the Qur’an, the purpose of this article is not to point out that the Qur’an is deficient in any way. It is comprehensive and clear in and of itself; however, it is we who are deficient—particularly if not from an Arabic background. This is the audience QBP aims to satisfy in the long-run, essentially bringing together useful sources of knowledge into one compact app to again, make it more convenient for the busy Muslim(ah).

The app can be downloaded for free from the Google Playstore – http://bit.ly/2dMAX2n