Dear brothers, Imaams, and Du'aat

Assalamu 'alaikum wa rahamtullaahi wa barakaatuh

Allaah has blessed me to be fully involved in Da'wah in general and Jumu'ah khutbahs in particular for the past seventeen years. I have come to realise and appreciate the difficulties and hardships that all Imaams have go through due to the dearth of knowledge resources and time for research and preparation. The sad fact is that Imaams are spending most of their valuable time in their communities, playing an indispensable role. This has resulted, in some cases, with unqualified brothers finding themselves to be the only ones in the community able to give the khutbah.

These and other concerns motivated me to think of establishing a council for Imaams that would provide them with the educational support they need, similar to the support other professionals have in their fields. While myself and other concerned brothers were thinking of the logistics of implementing this idea, the advent of the Internet forced us to stop dead in our tracks. The thought of using the Internet for this very purpose had occurred to me and I was bold enough to say this. To me it was as if I was the person who had invented the Internet!

This technology reminded me of the du'aa of the wind that the Prophet Sallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam taught us, "O Allaah I ask You from its good and the good it was sent for, and seek refuge in You from its evil and the evil it was sent for".

The marathon began three years ago when I started visiting the most prominent Imaams worldwide. The responses ranged from some of them being very excited to others being very pessimistic. 'The Muslim Imaams do not even have computers let alone internet access' the pessimists said.

I had to ignore them totally and give my ears to those who were optimistic like myself. Our optimism of the idea was not emotional, but rather realistic and visionary.

It was based on two simple facts:

1- The great need and demand of such a service.
2- The easiness of using the Internet.

After collecting thousands of written and audio khutbas, I was unable to rejoice at this accomplishment for a long time. I came to realise that a huge amount of further work was required. In fact it dawned on me that the operation was so huge that it required a whole team specially dedicated for this purpose.

The team started off as small as containing three sincere brothers and by the grace of Allaah has grown such that at this moment it contains fifteen professional brothers.

Also, I found myself coming to terms with things that I had previously never even dreamt of, such as hosting, networks, intranet, local servers and so many other new technologies - all of which translates into extra financial costs.

The most unforeseen and perhaps difficult problem I faced was the mentality of many prosperous Muslims who where hitherto unaccustomed to donating for such projects, rather they felt more inclined towards the 'traditional' forms of charitable projects such as building Masjids or schools.

It has been a wonderful blessing from Allaah that the Arabic site has been launched. Even I as the most optimistic member of the team never expected to reach about three thousand Imaams on weekly basis. Our server counter is informative and accurate, these Imaams represent sixty two countries and territories. With the advent of the English site's launch, we expect the number to increase greatly if not double.

I thank on all your behalves, the brothers and sisters working in the English department for this great effort and more importantly for their patience with our financial difficulties, which resulted in late salaries. Despite this they have had the spirit to continue working and bringing you more powerful and moving khutbas.

We are not satisfied yet with the technical side of this version of Alminbar. It is just a matter of time and you will all enjoy a very sophisticated and technically efficient web site, Allaah willing.

We apologise for being unable to translate all the materials related to the fiqh of the khateeb and the fiqh of the khutbah. These sections are very comprehensive researches done originally in Arabic. The only obstacle in this regard is of course the finance needed to hire more translators and editors.

Finally, we welcome you all to your site; Alminbar is a site for every Muslim who wishes to seek knowledge and more specifically for every Imaam looking to improve his speech and enhance the knowledge level of his congregation.

We ask that you give us feedback on the site, your valuable comments will be always appreciated and dealt with seriously.

May Allah bless and preserve you all.

Your brother in Islaam,

Wajdi Hamzah Al Ghazzawi