When a Judgement Engine Became a Data Mission: The Unlikely Birth of the World’s Largest Salah Dataset
The Story of How the First Judgement Dashboard to Determine Whether You Will Go to Heaven or Hell Became a Mission to Create the World's Largest Salah Dataset
How did it start
On the night of 31 December 2024, while millions of people around the world were preparing to welcome the New Year with worships, fireworks, music, celebrations, and many other ways, I welcomed it by building a Judgement Dashboard.
A week later, I made a post on Facebook, about it:
On the night of the 31st, I built this simple dashboard (Judgement Dashboard) using the Django Framework (Python). The big idea is to keep track of all my daily prayers (Salat) and Sins for the rest of my life. I will later add all the other pillars in Islam. Then I add the sins: Gossiping, Backbiting, Lying, Hate, Anger, Jealousy, Fornication, Adultery, vain talk, Time Wasting, Cheating, Disobeying Parents, Envy, Breaking promises, etc.The idea is to calculate a Heaven Score (just as we have a Credit Score). Based on your Heaven Score, you will have a fair idea of where you are likely to go when you die.
A key feature I would like to add is where groups (Friends) or Family Members can use it to track their scores. For example, friends can decide to keep track of their Salat and see who is performing the most. Salat will have a big weight in calculating the Heaven Score.
Will also integrate a dashboard where you can see your Salat or Fasting trend over the years.
Who would like to use a platform like this?
The Immediate Need
Calculating the Heaven Score was not the immediate need. My immediate goal was to have a platform where I could record all the Salat I would perform for the rest of my life.
So, the initial web application I built was a very simple web form built using the Django Framework (Python). In fact, I was just using the default Django Admin interface, and I hosted it locally on my laptop.
Whenever I finished Salat, all I needed to do was log in to the application, select the prayer type, and click on Save. The name of the prayer, together with the time and date I prayed it, would be saved into an SQLite database.
Later, I modified the Django Admin model to also capture the Country and City of where I was logging the salah. Recording the city was very important because, with that information, we would be able to know the expected time the Salat was supposed to be prayed and compare it with the actual time it was prayed. With this, I would be able to determine, over some period, what percentage of my salat is prayed on time.
I used this simple local web application for about three months, and everything was working well, but there were challenges.
- The first challenge was that my local server had to always be running. That meant my laptop had to be switched on all the time. Anytime I finished Salat, I had to go to my laptop, open the browser, and log in to record it. Sometimes the local server would be off, and I had to start it first before I could log the Salat.
- The second challenge was mobility. If I was on the go, I had no way to record my Salat unless I had my laptop with me.
- The third challenge came after I shared the idea on Facebook. Some people liked the idea and wanted to try the application. However, because it was running locally on my laptop, there was no way I could share it with them.
At that point, I told myself: "I need a mobile app."
But that presented an even bigger problem. I did not have the skill set to build a mobile application. I had missed the mobile application world, and I felt I would spend too much time learning React or other technologies, despite having ChatGPT by my side.
With no skill set to immediately build a mobile app, I came up with a different trick: Telegram.
Telegram
I created a Telegram group and added my wife. We came up with a simple rule: anytime I finished Salah, I would put the name of the Salah in the chat group. Just that.
For example, I would simply send the message "Maghrib" to indicate that I had completed Maghrib. If my wife finished Isha, she would also put "Isha" in the group.
The beauty of this approach was that every Telegram message came with a timestamp. This meant that when I exported and transformed the data later, I would be able to know exactly when we prayed the Salah.
This made it easy for me to record my Salat while I was on the go, and I could also share the link with people who wanted to join.
The little work I needed to do was to build a process that would extract the reports, clean and transform the data, and ingest it into any platform that visualisation tools like Power BI or Google Data Studio could consume.
I currently work as a Data Engineer, so building such an ingestion platform would not be difficult. Telegram also provides a public API that would make the automation easy.
After some time of using the Telegram group, I felt the need to capture more information beyond just sending "Maghrib" or "Isha" to the chat group.
I also wanted to know if I performed any Rawatib. Remember, we were also missing the Expected Prayer Time and the location where I prayed it.
With this additional information needed, I tried building a form inside Telegram where users could fill in details anytime they finished prayer, but I could not implement it the way I wanted. So, I went back to the web application and improved it to include additional information. And not just that, and to also find a way to move it online.
Heroku Deployment
I deployed the improved version online and hosted it on Heroku. This meant that it was no longer tied to my local laptop. I could access it anywhere, including from my phone, but it was still a website and not a mobile application.
To make it easier to access on my phone, I created a shortcut of the website, which became an icon on my phone, almost like an app.
With the platform hosted on Heroku, I was able to export the data as CSV or JSON files. Heroku also provided an SQL editor where I could query the data directly.
By this time, the information I was capturing had expanded to include
- Rawatib Before
- Rawatib After
- Geolocation(Longitude)
- Geolocation (Latitude)
- Prayer Location (Home, Mosque, Work, Other)
- Concentration Level
- Confidence Level
- Dua
- Mistake
- Reflection
The Magic.
On the 25th of April 2026, Obed, my Data Engineering student, introduced me to Abacus AI Agent. And that changed everything.
Within three months, I was able to build and publish the mobile application that I desperately needed. The app is now available on both the App Store (iOS) and Play Store (Android), and I have also built a Web Platform that allows users to log their Salah in the same way as the mobile app.
The system now captures about 48 different data points/columns, providing very rich information that can be used to properly analyse Salah.
However, by this stage, the idea had moved away from calculating a Heaven Score that determines whether someone would go to Heaven or Hell. The focus changed to calculating a Salah Quality Score that helps analyse and improve the quality of Salah. You can’t determine who goes to Heaven or Hell, that is in the realm of Allah. He has complete authority over judgement, mercy, and punishment.
“To Allah alone belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. He forgives whoever He wills, and punishes whoever He wills. And Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” - 3:129
Another point worth mentioning here is, now the Siraat is purely decided to Salah and not the entire pillars of Islam.
So what is Siraat?
Siraat is the first application designed to create comprehensive Salah data from your daily prayers.
This data is used to calculate your Salah Quality Score, a measure that helps you improve your prayer habits, and understand how closely your Salah aligns with the qualities taught in the Prophet’s ﷺ guidance that says:
"Pray as you have seen me pray."
With an AI-powered engine, Siraat transforms your prayer data into meaningful insights and personalised recommendations to help you understand, reflect on, and improve your worship journey.
Every Friday at 8:00 pm, Siraat delivers your personal Weekly Salah Performance Summary directly to your email and WhatsApp. This helps you reflect on your progress, understand your prayer patterns, and identify areas where you can continually improve.
Siraat allows you to export your entire prayer data and that means, for the first time ever, you will be able to preserve your complete Salah data as a digital legacy for generations to come.
What makes Siraat different?
Before building Siraat, I spent time reviewing some of the most popular Islamic applications available on the App Store and Play Store, especially those that focus on Salah. Almost all of them focus on prayer times, reminders, Quran, Qibla direction, Du’a, Dhikr, and other aspects of Islamic practice.
Some of them go slightly further by allowing users to record whether they prayed or not. However, this is mostly a simple yes-or-no approach.
Siraat focuses on deeper questions:
- How good is the quality of my Salah?
- How can I improve my Salah?
- What areas of my Salah require more attention?
- How does my Salah journey compare with others in my community?
The Siraat website (https://siraat.org) demonstrates these insights using my own personal Salah data. Note: Your Salah information remains private and is only visible within your own account.
The future of Siraat
- My vision is that, one day, across homes and mosques around the world, there will be dashboards showing Salah trends across families, communities, cities, countries, continents, and eventually the entire Muslim Ummah.
- Millions of Muslims will be able to generate meaningful Salah data, and millions of data analysts, researchers, scholars, and community leaders will be able to study those patterns to provide better guidance and support.
- One day, Salah can be analysed the same way we analyse the stock market.
- Imagine an Imam standing during a Khutbah and saying:
"This week, our community spent a combined 400 hours in the presence of Allah through Salah. Alhamdulillah, our Salah Quality Score has improved by 15% compared to last week. However, we noticed that our Isha performance dropped significantly, and many people struggled with maintaining focus. Let us work together to improve this."
- Imagine a family head being able to see the Salah journey of their household, not to judge anyone, but to encourage and support each other.
- Imagine a scholar being able to understand the challenges Muslims are facing in their community and tailor reminders, lessons, and advice based on real data rather than assumptions.
What is the volume of data expected to generate?
For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have been performing Salah every single day without any structured dataset that helps us understand how we are performing this essential act of worship. Siraat aims to change that.
According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 2.1 billion Muslims worldwide. Among these Muslims, a significant percentage perform the five daily prayers. If we assume that between 60% and 80% of Muslims pray regularly, that represents approximately 1.26 billion to 1.68 billion Muslims performing Salah every day.
Now imagine if every single Salah performed generated structured data.
A single prayer record in Siraat can capture dozens of different data points, including:
- User information
- Date
- Prayer name (Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha)
- Expected prayer time
- Actual prayer time
- Whether the prayer was performed on time
- Location
- Wudu quality
- Khushu (level of concentration and humility)
- Tadabbur (reflection and understanding of the verses recited)
- Niyyah clarity
- Ruku quality
- Sujud quality
- Whether the prayer was performed in congregation
- Whether it was behind an Imam
- Whether Rawatib prayers were performed
- Whether mistakes were made
- Whether there were interruptions
- Whether the person rushed through the prayer
- Whether Dua was made
- Whether Dhikr was performed
- Personal reflections
- Confidence level
- Overall prayer grade
Currently, Siraat captures about 48 different columns for every Salah record. This means every prayer creates a rich row of structured data that can be analysed for personal improvement and community-level insights.
Now, let's look at the scale.
If one Muslim performs five daily prayers and each prayer creates one row containing 48 columns:
5 prayers × 1 row per prayer = 5 rows per person per day
If only 1 million Muslims use Siraat and each person performs five daily prayers:
1,000,000 Muslims × 5 Salah records = 5 million rows every single day
In one year:
5 million rows × 365 days = 1.825 billion Salah records
Now imagine scaling this to tens or hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world.
The resulting Salah dataset would become one of the largest datasets ever created around a single act of worship.
But the value is not just the size of the data.
The real value is what the data can teach us.
It can help us understand:
- Are Muslims struggling more with Fajr or Isha?
- Which prayers are most frequently delayed?
- Are people losing concentration during certain times of the year?
- How does Ramadan change Salah behaviour?
- How does a community's Salah quality change over time?
- What factors contribute to stronger prayer habits?
For the first time, we could move from simply encouraging people to improve their Salah to actually understanding where improvement is needed through data.
Building a digital legacy of Salah
One of the unexpected benefits of Siraat is something I did not initially consider when building the first version. That is, a person's Salah journey can become a digital legacy. Imagine, many years from now, your children being able to look back and see your journey. Not as a measure of your worth before Allah, because only Allah knows that, but as a record of your effort, discipline, struggles, and improvement.
They can see how you worked on your Salah, how you improved over time, and how important this relationship with Allah was in your life.
In a world where we preserve photographs, videos, financial records, academic achievements, and professional history, Siraat allows us to preserve something even more personal: our journey of worship.
That is the bigger vision behind Siraat.
To use technology, data, and artificial intelligence as tools to help Muslims reflect, improve, and strengthen their connection with Allah.