“The Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs (Awqaf), through its Department of Mosques, has unveiled 'Minbar' — a smart application designed to lift the Friday sermon out of the confines of time and place and carry it, intact, into the rhythm of everyday life. The launch sits squarely within the ministry's wider digital transformation drive, an attempt to widen the reach of the mosque and let its message travel as freely as the people who receive it. Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Abdulaziz al-Thani, Director of the Department of Mosques, said the initiative reflects a commitment to delivering trustworthy, accessible Islamic content with the help of artificial intelligence. The aim, he explained, is to turn the khutba from a fixed weekly event into a continuous, interactive companion that reaches worshippers wherever they happen to be. The app is built around a cluster of intelligent features. It renders sermons into English through AI-powered translation, offers multilingual summaries in Arabic and English, and provides simplified versions shaped for children. Interactive question-and-answer content, drawn directly from each sermon, is included to deepen understanding and encourage practical application. Users can also watch Friday prayers live, dip into a complete archive of past sermons, and move comfortably through a bilingual Arabic-English interface. The director said these tools are meant to make religious content both more engaging and more widely available. The audience, he stressed, is deliberately broad: non-Arabic speakers, children, women, travellers and those whose circumstances keep them from the mosque, alongside anyone simply wishing to grasp the Friday message more fully. The app also opens a door for non-Muslims to learn about Islamic values and teachings from a reliable source. According to the ministry, 'Minbar' tightens the bond between the mosque's voice and the digital platforms now central to daily life, supporting the spread of authentic religious knowledge and the promotion of moderation and awareness through modern means. Future updates, it added, will introduce AI-based audio translation and further interactive features guided by user feedback.
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