Whether you're a Muslim traveling for your summer holiday, a Muslim businessman on an assignment or a Muslim family relocating to a new town, it is important to quickly access prayer times, find a mosque and perhaps discover what resources are available to local Muslims. IslamicFinder.com is an excellent site to turn to for all these purposes.
IslamicFinder is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving Islam on the Internet. Their website makes available information about mosques, Islamic organizations, Islamic centers, and Muslim-owned businesses all over the world. The webmaster invites users to send details about such locations in their local communities to grow the site. IslamicFinder also provides prayer times for more than 5.2 million cities worldwide, with quite accurate information about any of these city's Qiblah direction, distance from the Kaaba, longitude and latitude.
The site features an Islamic web directory covering essential information about Islam such as Islamic fundamentals, the Holy Qur'an, Hadith, fiqh, fatawa, education, Islamic history and biography, economy and commerce and more. Another service provided by IslamicFinder is the Hijri calendar and Gregorian-Hijri date conversion.
From the site it's possible to download free Adhan software, which once installed on a computer allows the machine to automatically output the call to prayer five times daily. IslamicFinder also has a nice photo gallery. The pictures show many every day objects such as prayer mats, Islamic clothing, hats and caps. There are also pictures on the Ramadan theme and nearly 800 international mosque photos. The digitized calligraphy collection can be used to create e-cards to send for every occasion. The latest e-card added to the site on Sept. 15 reads, "Islam means peace." That's a message that all Muslims should work to get out to people everywhere.
Molouk Y. Ba-Isa
© Arab News 2004
