IslamiCity, a trusted digital media and education platform in the United States, has taken measures to preserve the Qur’an forever, by placing it as NFTs on the blockchain.
And although the Qur’an contains sacred texts that are meant to be perpetual, the move by IslamiCity will make certain that it cannot be edited or deleted making the NFTs that constitute the text part of platform’s permanent record.
Mohammad Aleem, the Co-Founder and CEO of IslamiCity said, “In every era, sacred texts have been passed down through the use of the most modern technologies of the time. In the mid-1400s, it was the Gutenberg Press. Then it was the internet. Today, it’s blockchain. The goal is still the same: preserve these sacred texts and make them widely available to the public.”
And due to its decentralized nature, putting the entire Qur’an on platform that is impenetrable against editing and censorship provides a unique advantage to both print and digital versions.
Protecting information forever
Jihad Turk, founding President and Dean of Bayan Islamic Graduate School commented, “Information on a website can easily be taken down or hacked by entities or governments for any number of reasons. The blockchain prevents such manipulation. Whereas we continue to pass on the Quran through oral traditions and the collective memory of the Muslim community, the blockchain serves as the collective ‘memory’ of the internet. Making use of this technology to faithfully preserve and present the Quran fulfills our collective responsibility to accurately convey this message to humanity.”
This isn’t the first time such sacred texts have been preserved on the blockchain as the Old Testament was preserved as NFTs in 2021. There’s also The Qur’an Verse project which includes 6,236 NFTs, one for each verse of the holy book. Each NFT also cointains both contextual and historical information about its verse.
So far IslamiCity has sold more than 500 NFTs for $45,000 before its move to preserve the Qur’an on the blockchain. The organisation will use its sales from NFTs to fund the creation of an Islamic autonomous metaverse called the Ummah Network.
This new initiative is aimed at aligning and empowering Muslims across the globe to collectively coordinate public projects in the Web3 space with its first project being the Qur’an+ app that’s tailored towards encouraging the digital generation to engage with the scripture and strive to understand it better.
Individuals can access the Qur’an Verse NFTs on OpenSea.io.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
