Peace through technology: 26-year-old's interactive Quran app to tackle terrorism
Zeena Qureshi is aiming to use interactive Quran and AI to combat radicalisation and terrorism. Photo: Evening Standard
(Web Desk) – A 26-year-old American Muslim living in London has found a new way to combat radicalisation with a mission to create a “living Quran”.
According to Evening Standard, Zeena Qureshi founded Ananas a charitable foundation as a platform to fight against radicalisation. Qureshi, the chief executive of Ananas, explains that through “mapping ideologies” and providing a compass to navigate belief systems and also using cryptocurrency to reward contributors.
Ananas, adopted a similar approach like Google and Facebook in terms of mapping how people think. Except pushing users towards advertisements the foundation is working on helping people by understanding each other better. The foundation’s first mission is to create a “living Quran”, to combat jihadist terrorism and Islamophobia.
“There’s this question: ‘Is Islamic State Islamic?’ There’s no authoritative source to answer that,” says Qureshi. “A living Quran will make it easy to see what Islam actually is.”
Despite countless Quran apps with different translations, the foundation’s goal is to provide information on each verse, aiming to explain what different denominations believe, giving a platform for research and allowing users to search by a theme or word to see every mention of it in the Quran.
“It will expand and collapse — you’ll be able to dive in with as much depth as you want and see it from different schools of thought and in different translations,” explains Qureshi. “You can even see it from a Sufi or non-Muslim perspective. We’re trying to build a platform that provides context to subjective information.”
The Living Quran Prototype. Photo: Ananas website
How will this help tackle extremism? “Information without context isn’t knowledge. Extremists have so many people marketing for them online. They target vulnerable, isolated individuals. If these people are looking for answers, they need to come to a place where this information is outlined. Things like Charlottesville are happening because people don’t have the information or understanding. Information feeds empathy.”
What about the more contentious Quranic passages? “You mean like ‘slay them wherever you find them?’ The context isn’t there. Right now you’ll see lots of Muslims and they’re not killing anyone. The reason extremists use [verses] out of context is that there’s nowhere that gives [their extremist ideology] in one place. We will give all the information for those verses so people can see how it was applicable historically, and how it is applicable today.”
The Living Quran Prototype. Photo: Ananas website
And does she think IS is Islamic? “IS takes translations out of context for political gains. It’s altruistic evil — they think what they’re doing is right but they’re twisting things. But I don’t have the authority to state whether they’re Muslim or not.”
Ananas aims to expand its projects towards adding more belief systems including political ideologies. “This digital mapping could work for anything — philosophy, art. This way, everyone has a voice, and their voice has value.”
Ananas uses artificial intelligence to organise the data, and knowledge graphs to explore the relationships between different groups’ beliefs, but the most innovative part is the cryptocurrency. Qureshi calls the Ananas token — the “Anacoin” — a “cryptocurrency for peace”.
“We want to give people a reward,” she explains. “If the value of the information goes up, the token will go up. You can use the cryptocurrency to sponsor a verse, gain rewards by moderating or adding information, and you can trade it. Whenever someone trades it, if it’s gone up in value, half the proceeds go to the foundation, the other half goes into someone’s pocket. People should be rewarded for the good things they do.”
The platform was the idea of Emad Mostaque, co-chief investment officer at the hedge fund Capricorn Fund Managers, who is also Qureshi’s brother-in-law.
The Ananas team — three full-time, but 30 including advisers and volunteers — embodies the dialogue between different groups they are trying to encourage. The chief technology officer is Sikh, and the chairman Anglican. Qureshi, who is American but came to the UK to study history of art and material studies at UCL and has lived in London for the past eight years, calls herself a “hybrid”: “My Mum is Shia, my father is Sunni and I was raised in the Bible Belt. If I had a sleepover on Saturday I’d go to church with friends on Sunday. I wasn’t a Christian but they hoped they could evangelise me! My friends are agnostic, Catholic, Jewish.”
But why is it called Ananas? “Pineapples were historically a sign of welcome for gatherings,” says Qureshi. “The word ‘ananas’ is derived from ‘nanas’, meaning ‘excellent fruit’. We usually don’t take sides — we’re about people coming to their own conclusions — but we do have a view on which is the most excellent fruit.”
