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The Bible and The Koran On Your Cell Phone
November 25, 2008 8:45 AM
By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem
One of Israel’s biggest cell phone companies is offering users full text access to both the Bible and the Koran.
For a fee of $1.40 a month people who use Pelephone cell phones can access any passage of either holy book at the flick of a few keys.
“A year and a half ago we decided to move closer to the world of texts because technology allowed us to create a unique reading experience,” said Pelephone’s Motti Cohen in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
“We have thousands of users who enter and read the Bible and now the Koran too,” he added.
Dr Mordechai Kedar a member of Bar Ilan University’s Arabic Department, welcomes the new service.
“I’m not a subscriber yet” he told Haaretz, “but I think it’s a very practical idea. As a researcher I can see myself going into the Koran via a 3G phone and urgently retrieving a specific verse…the integration of Muslim ideas that were born in the seventh century with 21st century gadgets is a welcome phenomenon.”
Downloading the sound of special Muslim calls to prayer on a cell phone is already very popular in the Middle East. It is not unusual to hear ring tones in the form of a chanting muezzin in Jerusalem’s streets.
Every morning I take my son to kindergarten on the back of my bicycle, and every morning we pass the same young Palestinian man listening to Islamic verses on his cell phone. I wonder if he’s a Pelephone subscriber?
Read more blogs by Simon McGregor-Wood
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November 25, 2008 in Simon McGregor-Wood | Permalink | User Comments (2)
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"He hath loosed the two seas. They meet. There is a barrier between them. They encroach not (One upon the other). Which is it, of the favours of your lord, that ye deny? There cometh forth from both of them the pearl and coral stone. Which is it, of the favours of your lord, that ye deny?"
"O company of jinn and men, if ye have power to penetrate (all) regions of the heaven and the earth, then penetrate (them)! Ye will never penetrate them save with (Our) sanction. Which is it, of the favours of your lord, that ye deny?"
The Quran
Posted by: Muhammad | Nov 25, 2008 11:39:47 AM
Wow, an Israeli company offering the Koran on a cell phone! I bet a Muslim company wouldn't offer the Torah on a cell phone.
Posted by: french queen | Nov 25, 2008 1:13:11 PM
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