Hussainya

Every Muharram, the month our community gathers most nights, it was the same: three group chats, a photo of a flyer someone took off a noticeboard, and my mum asking which centre had something on that night. Nobody could answer without ringing someone. The prayer app on my phone used a calculation we do not follow, and the date it gave for the religious calendar was a day off what our centre had announced. A couple of community directories list the centres here, but they are partial, years out of date, and none of them tell you what is on tonight. So the practical part of the week ran on screenshots.

• Seventy-odd centres across Australia Address, phone, website and socials for each one, plus what they have coming up. Grouped by state with yours at the top, and searchable by name or suburb. Anyone signed in can propose a correction, and it comes to me to approve.
• Prayer times you can correct Calculated the way our community does it, which puts the evening prayer well after sunset. Each of the five can be nudged by up to an hour to match what your own centre calls. Six cities so far: Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra.
• A calendar that knows the occasions The religious year alongside the ordinary one: days of mourning in red, births in green, Eid in gold, and a dot on any day a centre you follow has something on.
• Host a gathering, share one link Create a private event at your own address and send the link. Whoever opens it and accepts gets it in their calendar inside the app, and it never appears in the public listings.
• The annual tithe, worked out in front of you Khums is a fifth of what you have left over at year’s end, split between two funds. Enter your surplus and your deductions and every line of the working stays on screen, including what you have already paid.
• Counters that keep your place Say how long you have been behind on prayers and it sets a starting count for each of the five, which you tick down as you catch up. The dhikr counter beeps at the number you set, so you can keep your eyes shut.

I decided the calculated answer is not automatically the right one. Prayer times follow the method our community uses, which puts the evening prayer well after sunset rather than at it, and every time can still be nudged by up to an hour so it matches what your own centre calls out. The calendar works the same way: when the community sights the new moon a night later, I shift the whole thing by a day for everyone. I would rather agree with your centre than be technically correct on my own.

It is in private beta. Testers have it; both app stores still say coming soon. The directory is seventy-odd centres, and keeping it right is the part that never finishes. The last batch I added was forty-four, each one checked against the centre’s own web page, and five more were thrown out because I could not confirm they were real, distinct centres rather than a name on someone else’s list. Two sections did not make the first release. The next real test is whether centres post their own events instead of me chasing them.