The General Secretary of Executive Board of salamworld.com, Mr. Nedim Kaya, called on Ameer-e-Jamaat and other functionaries at Jamaat-e-Islami Hind headquarters in the Capital on Apr 10 to discuss the plans of his organisation to launch a social networking site, which would be free from all kinds of harmful and haram (forbidden as per Islamic law) content and would be an alternative of Facebook. The cost of the project is around $ 5 million and he has been meeting the heads of the Muslim countries and other organisations across the globe. According to the survey done by salamworld.com, out of 2 billion people who use internet, 300 million are Muslims and in the coming 10 years the number is expected to rise to 700 million. Of these people who use internet, 70 per cent use social networking site, which points out towards the immense online internet potential in terms of revenue. Last year Facebook alone generated around $ 1.86 billion from advertisements.
However Facebook is not the only networking site. Qzone, which is popular in China has 485 million users, VKontakte in Russia has 135 million users. So Salamworld, an Islamic IT project, as per Mr. Kaya, would be a new alternative for Muslims which would be global, innovative, free from any haram content, multi-lingual and multi-cultural social networking site based on halal (permissible as per Islamic law) financial market to meet the needs and requirements of modern Muslims. There will be halal online shopping as well and it will be a kind of Islamic virtual world and would be safe for the young users, as it will be free from adult contents.
The 4-minute introductory video available on the website claims that the site will overcome the political, cultural and language barrier and will connect the Muslims to the rest of the world and the world to the Muslims. As it has been a site adapted by the Muslims for the Muslims, it will become a place where young Muslims can get education, socialise, and have fun, without any fear of getting exposed to harmful contents. It will have applications like ‘read the news,’ ‘unique Islamic heritage library,’ etc. The message that comes at the end of the video says, “Open yourself to the world and open world for yourself.”
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