When I first started OneUmmah.Net back in 1999, it was intended to be my small attempt at uniting Muslims by offering a few thoughts on the subject. I was ignorant and young, but I hope and prayed I could contribute what little I knew.
Today, I am still ignorant but a little older. The site has outgrown me and not the other way around. Of the thousands of monthly visitors who view the site, most are looking for the most pure guidance, the Qur’an, rather than my ramblings or the ramblings of our many hundreds of writers in the Muslim Writers Society.
People liked the way we had the Qur’an translation side-by-side with the Arabic text, but there were serious flaws in the Arabic text that were spreading all over the Internet, and I fear that we may have contributed to the spread. There is no need to ask for copying permission for the Qur’an, so people freely distributed the same flawed text on a viral scale.
The Tanzil project leaders recognized this and began work on an authenticated textual database that they released to the public under a Creative Commons license. Allah blessed me to be able to complete the synthesis of that database onto our site earlier this year, using programming skills I did not previously possess.
I have announced it before, but since it is Ramadan, the month of the Qur’an, I thought I would remind everyone that we have this free resource available online. Futhermore, for those who want a desktop/laptop application for more in-depth Qur’an study, consider the Zekr project.
