Join the #Ayahaday Challenge!
Join us this Ramadan on the #Ayahaday challenge, along with your favorite Shuyookh, Reciters, and social media influencers! https://www.ayahaday.com
Join us this Ramadan on the #Ayahaday challenge, along with your favorite Shuyookh, Reciters, and social media influencers! Nominate and encourage your friends and family to interact with a single Quranic verse every day. Let's keep ourselves accountable and build a lifelong habit that will pay dividends in this life and beyond!
Surah Al-An'am - The Cattle 6:32
وَمَا الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلاَّ لَعِبٌ وَلَهْوٌ وَلَلدَّارُ الآخِرَةُ خَيْرٌ لِّلَّذِينَ يَتَّقُونَ أَفَلاَ تَعْقِلُونَ
"This worldly life is no more than play and amusement, but far better is the ˹eternal˺ Home of the Hereafter for those mindful ˹of Allah˺. Will you not then understand?"
The #Ayahaday Challenge builds on the core mission of Tarteel.AI to help Muslims across the globe cultivate a consistent, lasting, and meaningful relationship with the Quran.
The Why?
As a part of our continued opensource work for Quran.com, we led a large-scale user research survey with over 5,800 respondents to understand the challenges Muslims face when it comes to connecting with the Quran.
When survey participants were asked what were the biggest challenges they faced when interacting with the Quran, the three most common choices were Lack of motivation (19.8%), Lack of time (19.8%), and lack of Discipline (18.5%).
When asked how they stayed motivated to engage with the Quran on a regular basis Respondents 31.8% of the respondents disclosed "Habit" as their top result, followed by the Hasanat [Good Deeds] (21.9%) and Family/Friends (15.8%).
Creating Habits
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg writes that 45% of the decisions we make in our daily lives are habits. A Habit is a formula our brain automatically follows based on a decision we have made and stop thinking about.
Duhigg describes the habit loop consisting of 3 simple steps:
Cues: Are the triggers that alert your brain to act automatically, and which habit to use.Cues can be anything, from a visual trigger, time of day, emotions, or people and places.
Routines: Is the behaviour you automatically engage in.
Routines can be physical, mental or emotional, and simple or complex.
Rewards: The result of completing the routine. Can be intrinsic or extrinsic.
People build habits in all sorts of ways. As Muslims, Allah has given us a potent first step to take when we want changes in our lives: making Dua! Here's one Dua from the Quran that might help you build the habit of reading the Quran.
Surah Taha - Ta-Ha 20:114*
رَّبِّ زِدْنِى عِلْمًۭا
“My Lord! Increase me in knowledge.”
The Quran contains many examples of the Duas made by the Muslims before us. But if you find it difficult to remember them, another option is to ask Allah using your own words.
As we enter Ramadan, remember to make the intention to read Quran every day and make Dua for Allah to improve your relationship with the Quran. These important Islamic tools can help you build strong habits this Ramadan!
Ayahaday.com
In order to leverage the Habit loop, we took over the development of ayahday.com. We wanted to create a visually appealing website and mailing list to serve as a reminder to engage with the Quran on a daily basis. Upon subscription, Ayahaday is delivered directly to your device - it's an easy reminder to recite Quran every day.
We also created a companion browser extension to make Ayah a Day your home page on your browser for constant exposure and reminder. The website features the thematic and easy-to-read contemporary English translation by Dr. Mustafa Khattab entitled "The Clear Quran". For the month of Ramadan, we will feature recitations by Qari Fatih Seferagic. We also make it easy for you to reflect on each day's ayah by submitting and exploring community reflections on quranreflect.com.
The Ayah a Day challenge is also a cornerstone in V5 of the Tarteel Mobile App where we further build upon these core concepts of the Habit loop for you to actually create more distinct cues, help streamline and automate your routines when it comes to your Quranic workflow, and also help you quantify the actual rewards through automated Tracking, Deeds Estimation, and Rewards in the shape of badges and streaks upon completion of certain milestones.
Be sure to learn about our Recite a Quran, Give a Quran challenge on the Tarteel app to help you complete the Quran this Ramadan and earn the everlasting Reward of a free Quran donation on your behalf.
Surah Al-Isra - The Journey by Night 17:12
"We made the day and night as two signs. So We made the sign of the night devoid of light, and We made the sign of the day ˹perfectly˺ bright, so that you may seek the bounty of your Lord and know the number of years and calculation ˹of time˺. And We have explained everything in detail."
"People Struggle to balance their lives with the Quran, but the Quran is what brings balance to your life".
Fatih Seferagic
Utilizing social media to your advantage this Ramadan.
We intimately understand how we use our digital devices and the role social media plays in our day to day lives in the modern context. Although these platforms are great for gaining self-representation by Muslim creators, they are also systematically designed to keep you endlessly hooked and make it very easy to waste time scrolling.
Get Involved - #ayahaday / #recitewithme
The content that thrives in this meme-based culture is often problematic and toxic to the Muslim Identity of our youth. To foster a better environment, we have partnered with some amazing Reciters and Influencers to help transform your "Explore" and "For You" pages on social media during the month of Ramadan by sharing the content with the #ayahaday and #recitewithme tags and creating the challenge for you to nominate others to do the same. You do not have to be a professional Sheikh or reciter to participate, you can simply share or duet the existing content or add some personal reflections on how you would implement the Ayah into your life. Engage with your immediate community and encourage them to build better habits along with you this Ramadan!
#Recitewithme is a wholesome social media tag and brand persona created by Faraj Hassan. @dr.farajhasan is an influencer that has gained amazing traction on TikTok creating the type of Islamic content we'd love to see more of on social media. Faraj uses the Quran to drive his content and encourages others to recite along with him. We love his efforts to make the Quran available, easy, and engaging to everyone!
There aren't many Qur'an reciters in the world more popular than Fatih Seferagic. He has a uniquely and beautifully soothing voice and his recitations on YouTube have attracted millions of views.
Bilal Mohamed is a hafiz from New Jersey also creating a social media presence and doing great work influencing individuals to interact with his Beautiful recitations on Social Media. He is an engineering student at Rutgers University and is an avid gamer. His influences include Mohamed Gebril, Ismael Essa, and Abdul Basit Abdul Samad.
We'd love more partners to come on-board to help people create a life long habit this Ramadan. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out at [email protected]. and Be sure to follow our Instagram at http://instagram.com/tarteel.ai.
Special Thanks to Waqar Khan, Faraj Hasan, Yaqeen Institute, Amer Abbas, Quran Reflect, ISBCC, The Furqaan Foundation, Toqeer Khan, Fatih Seferagic, Bilal Mohammed and the rest of you for helping push this project forward! #ayahaday
- Ayah a day was previously a personal project by Waqar Khan (executive director for research at Yaqeen institute) with a mailing list over 10,000 subscriptions.
- All Quranic translations in the post are from Dr. Mustafa Khattab's The Clear Quran.
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