From Prayer Times to Global Community: How Muslim Pro App Serves the Digital Faithful

What began as a simple digital utility has evolved into what many consider an essential companion for Islamic practice in the modern age. With 170 million downloads across more than 190 countries, the Muslim Pro app illustrates how faith communities are adapting ancient traditions to digital formats without losing their essence.

When Muslim Pro was launched in 2010, its purpose was straightforward. “It was launched to provide accurate prayer times for Muslims all over the world where it’s not easily accessible,” explains Nafees Khundker, CEO and group managing director of Muslim Pro. “People in the West, they’re the ones who needed it most because over there you didn’t have mosques all over the place, right? It was like a companion for any Muslim to understand when the prayer times are.”

What’s notable is how quickly the app expanded beyond this initial function. “Slowly when we started … Very quickly actually, from being just a utility app, we started providing additional services,” Khundker notes. “And once again, services that we thought Muslims will need or Muslims always use, like the Quran, the first thing they would do is probably refer to Quran for questions, answers, or even read the Quran and try to understand the Quran.”

This expansion reflected an understanding that Muslim communities, particularly those in Western countries, needed comprehensive digital resources that could supplement traditional religious infrastructure.

Crossing Cultural and Linguistic Boundaries

The app’s global adoption has been facilitated by its commitment to accessibility across language barriers. “You can actually read the Quran in more than 60 languages in the platform today,” Khundker says.

This multilingual approach has proven particularly valuable for Muslim communities in linguistically diverse regions, where immigrants and converts from various backgrounds practice Islam.

The app found its initial audience in Western countries before expanding to Muslim-majority regions. “The app was very quickly accepted in the Western world and we started getting a lot of downloads and usage from there. That’s where we really grew initially, but later we saw that because we have more and more services and it was very easy to use, even in the Muslim-dominated countries also it did very well,” explains Khundker.

This pattern of adoption reflects the app’s origins as a solution for Muslims in regions without robust Islamic infrastructure, before proving valuable even in areas with established Muslim communities.

Leveraging Technology To Deepen Faith

For Muslims dealing with the intersection of traditional faith practices and modern digital life, Muslim Pro offers tools that complement rather than replace in-person worship.

The app recently introduced an artificial intelligence feature to provide reliable religious information. “Last year we launched our first AI-based solution, which we call Ask AiDeen, which is basically for any questions anyone has regarding Islam,” Khundker says. “You can ask any Islamic questions in our AI chatbot.”

This innovation addresses a common challenge for Muslims seeking accurate information online about their faith, where misinformation can be prevalent and authoritative sources difficult to identify.

Demographic data suggests the app has particular resonance with younger Muslims who are comfortable with digital tools. “The biggest trend we see, and which is probably logical, is that the younger, tech-savvy Muslims are the ones who are using it the most,” observes Khundker. “Of course, they’re the ones with the smartphones. They’re the ones who like the new features.”

He adds, “I would say more than 50% of our users would be between 18 and 34 years old, and it’s being increasingly used for educational purposes.”

Building Digital Community Amid Physical Isolation

Perhaps the most significant development for Muslim Pro is its upcoming community features, designed to connect Muslims across geographical boundaries.

“We are actually relaunching our community section where people can come in and at least there can be different types of forums and they will be different types of scholars and all will come in and you can have a lot more interaction within our app,” explains Khundker. “We’ve already built a community; it’s a global community. Now, they can actually come and interact with each other within the app also.”

“We are also focusing on the community aspect now where we feel that people all over the world want to connect with each other digitally with all these services,” says Khundker.

This virtual community can be particularly meaningful for converts or Muslims in areas with small Islamic populations. Khundker shares a powerful example: “I would want to highlight one of the stories from last year where this person was actually a revert from somewhere in Europe. I think it was Norway. I think she sent a message to our customer service and really, really said how Muslim Pro has changed her life, where she used it on a daily basis to read and understand the Quran, to really get back and find more context in what Islam is and how to actually practice Islam.”

He continues, “This person’s Islamic journey actually started with Muslim Pro, where she can easily have the whole Quran on her app, carried around, and look at it anytime, or any Islamic question that she had straight away came from that.”

Balancing Convenience and Privacy in Religious Technology

Like many religious technologies, Muslim Pro has had to deal with the tension between providing personalized services and respecting the deeply private nature of faith practices.

“We have a very, very strong process of managing data. Very few people will ever have access to individual data,” Khundker emphasizes. “Even I don’t have access.”

 The company recognizes that religious data carries particular sensitivity. “Faith is something people probably practice and most people practice at home. It’s very personal to each individual,” acknowledges Khundker. “For faith stuff, they’re more concerned about privacy. What they’re doing. What they’re searching for. How they’re practicing their faith.”

Location data, necessary for accurate prayer times, is handled with special care. “If the person says, ‘I am now in Singapore; what are the prayer times here?’ but tomorrow, the person is in Indonesia and changes the location, we don’t keep the information for Singapore,” explains Khundker. “We have only the last location the user asked us for.”

Expanding Services To Support Religious Practice

The app’s evolution continues with recent additions like travel services for religious pilgrimages. “End of last year, we launched our first Umrah travel services, where people can actually use our app to book their travel. Most Muslims would want to go to Mecca and Medina and perform their Umrah services,” says Khundker. 

This expansion reflects a comprehensive vision for the platform. “Now we have a new vision, is to be the digital home for all things Muslim, which is basically combining faith, technology, and also the whole lifestyle for Muslims. Whatever a Muslim needs in their daily life, we want to be there to provide those services,” Khundker explains.

“We want to be an app you turn [to] for anything you need to practice Islam — or anything you need in your daily life.”

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