Not only is this an exclusive interview but also our first interview request via Twitter. We sent a direct tweet to the founder and VP of Marketing, Ashraf Mansoor asking for an exclusive interview. He was very gracious to participate and discuss Twffaha, a new job recruitment portal specifically for women in the Middle East. Twffaha is based in Sudan and has already been featured on several sites, check out this review from StartupArabia. This interview marks their first media article via a Western Muslim site. Ashraf is also very kind to offer our female readers looking for work in the Middle East a beta invite to their site. Read the interview for instructions.

IslamCrunch: What is your web application/service about?

Twffaha: We connect women who are looking for jobs to employers who are looking to recruit women for certain vacancies. Twffaha is the only portal specialized in recruiting women in the Middle East.

IslamCrunch: Why did you start this project?

Twffaha: We feel that the online recruitment market in the Middle East is already full with prominent players. However, as a job seeker or employer you will find it harder every time you look for a job or advertising a job in case
you were an employer. The market needs to be more organized, and that
can be achieved by exploiting niches and adding value for both parties, job seekers by offering them a portal that is only aimed at women, and employers by reducing their recruiting costs and offering them more focused job postings.

IslamCrunch: How does your project relate to Muslims? Or is your project geared towards a general audience?

Twffaha: Twffaha.com is geared toward a general audience, we do not ask for
information regarding your religion background. However, we do not allow
employers to post jobs related to activities we deem illegal in Islam. For example,
if an employer posted a related to Alcohol/Bars through our service we will remove the job posting and refund him/her.

IslamCrunch: How much time do you devote to its growth?

Twffaha: As a startup we devote a large chunk of our time in developing, marketing, and managing Twffaha.com in order to ensure it will keep growing organically. Working for 50 hours a week is our average.

IslamCrunch: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Twffaha: The team behind the service comes from different cultures and background. We are well experienced with web development as Twffaha is actually our third project, although it is the first one we operate solely. Our team currently consists of two main members Ashraf Mansoor who is in charge of Development and Marketing and Ammar Mustafa who is responsible for Operations and Sales. We are looking to hire 3 more talented individuals to join our team in the following 2-3 months enshallah.

IslamCrunch: What is your design/service philosophy?

(more…)

We would like to thank the Radical Middle Way team for adding the IslamCrunch feed to their blogroll. We are honored to be a part of this prestigious organization.

The Radical Middle Way has just relaunched with a new look and plenty of new features.

Please visit their site here:

radicalmiddleway.co.uk

Don’t forget to check out their Multimedia section for beneficial audio and video files.

And please tell them that IslamCrunch sent you.

Found this environmentally conscious, socially active site via Facebook: http://www.greendeen.blogspot.com/

Their mission statement: “Green Deen is a proactive effort of young Muslim activists from Southern California who have come together for the sake of Allah (swt) to raise awareness and change the current environmental conditions by promoting a healthier, greener and more environmentally conscious lifestyle.”

The GreenDeen blog was started in April 2008 and has already posted beneficial content for those who want to be mindful of how we interact with the environment.

They have a strong following on Facebook for a young site, with 318 members in their group.

Get green for your deen!

Halalfire has put up 2 stealth sites announcing their coming e-mams.org and muslimparents.com services. Halalfire is well known for their Zabihah.com site which is an excellent resource for finding restaurants with halal and zabihah menus. Other services Halalfire offers are Salatomatic (directory of mosques and Islamic schools), Halalapalooza (directory of Muslim owned businesses) and their popular online magazine, AltMuslim.

E-mams… IslamCrunch guesses:

• Electronic fatwas
• Online khutbahs
• Directory of scholars
• Digital baya (pledge of allegiance) to a tariqa*

Just noticed on their ‘About Us’ page:

e-mams.org - Your guide to the diversity of Islamic thought (coming early 2008)
muslimparents.com - Your guide to child-centric Islamic parenting (coming mid 2008)

Also, listed is another unnamed stealth project and a unnamed partner site (both due early 2008).

We will be waiting…

A new web 2.0 search engine has been released that allows you to search the Arabic web using English text. Yamli follows the well-known Google model of having a mimimalist site: a simple search field and and a few links with Yamli’s other service. Actually, the search field (powered by Google) is not ’simple’. You type in a word and a list of Arabic equivalents is provided in a dropdown menu.

Yamli’s other service is their English to Arabic text editor. Send a message in Arabic and show off your command of broken Arabic language (choosing the correct word will need some knowledge of Arabic, so you could be sending a word that sounds like what you want to express but the letters could be wrong! And different letters changes the meaning). Correction: the Yamli Editor allows you to convert transliterated words into the Arabic equivalent.

Here is what I typed out using the Yamli Editor: 

First person to guess what I wrote in English gets a special invite to next the Web 2.0, Social Network or Muslim organization that we receive invites from. Drop a comment to submit your guess.