🦻🏻 Muslims Invent $20 Hearing Aid

In a week when Hajj is about to begin, Musletter wonders if it’s time to stop thinking about pilgrimage as a content opportunity (yes, there is even an academic study into ‘holy selfies’) and, while we’re at it, perhaps retire the word ‘Islamophobia’ and come up with a better term for this hatred. May Allah SWT grant Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha, and Nadir Awad Jannat al-Firdous.

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👂🏻 Muslim founders disrupt traditional hearing aids: Toronto-based founders Arish Shahab, Ramin Syed, and Aaron Yu understood something important: 800 million people worldwide need hearing aids, but 80% don’t have access. That’s because the $4,700 average price tag puts them out of range for so many people. So the founders started a company, Amano, which has undercut that crazy price by, well, 99%. Yes, their offering costs $20. That’s the price of three coffees. Or maybe one if you’re in Brooklyn. Want one? (A hearing aid, not a coffee). It’s easy: You take a pic of your ear, do an online hearing test, and they build you a customized model.

🇸🇾 Syria gets investment boost: It didn’t take long, did it? The ‘Open for Business’ sign is hanging on the door, and the whole world wants in. The EU has restored full trade ties with Syria, while the Gulf is also making moves, with Emaar Properties planning to invest $18 billion. This follows the US's removal of sanctions last year. The leadership wants to fast-track efforts to boost investor confidence and attract FDI. Whether that’s new oil deals (France and Qatar just signed a joint agreement for offshore exploration with Syria) or tourism, with the goal of attracting five million visitors this year. Reforming laws, revaluing its currency – Syria is hoping the open-for-business sign stays, well, open.

🕹️ Video games bring history into the present: A new game is using puzzles and storytelling to preserve Muslim history. Developed by Unity Productions Foundation, Vanished: Puzzle Quest takes you into the Islamic Golden Age. Your mission? To collect artifacts, solve puzzles, and stop scientific knowledge from being erased. All before lunch. The underlying goal of the game is to tell original stories rooted in Islamic civilization and to reach audiences of all ages in ways that traditional media cannot. Oh, did we mention it’s free? Now available for desktop and mobile.

🇶🇦 Predicting eye problems before they appear: A Qatar-based professor has developed a type of eye scan that can detect neurodegenerative diseases years before symptoms appear. It’s LensCrafters meets Minority Report! Professor Rayaz Malik at the Qatar campus of Weill Cornell Medicine has created a 3-minute test that uses AI to analyze nerve fibers in the eye. And it’s not just telling you if there are problems right now – it’s identifying early signs of conditions, including dementia, Parkinson’s disease, diabetic neuropathy, in some cases, many years in advance.

Islamic digital bank raises $51 million: Fasset has closed a Series B round to expand its Shariah-compliant digital investing platform across emerging markets. The bank was founded in 2019 and uses stablecoin technology. It offers digital investing, payments, and savings services to over two million users in 125 countries, and processes billions in annual transactions. Backed by a number of global investors, the company will use the funding to expand into new markets, with a plan to connect financial systems across a ‘Morocco-to-Malaysia corridor’ (so that’s most of the world then).

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