The graduate who is revolutionising the way Islamic prayer is taught to children

As the month of Ramadan draws to a close, we celebrate the achievements of University of South Wales graduate Kamal Ali, who has created a unique, interactive prayer mat for Muslim families.

My Salah Mat is an educational prayer mat designed to educate children on performing Islamic prayer in a fun and enjoyable way. It is touch-sensitive and has pre-recorded keys that can be touched to reveal sounds, such as prayer times, how to do wudu, recite surahs, say duas, and much more.

Kamal graduated in 2005 with a first class honours in Fashion Design, before studying an MA in Product Design and a PGCE, which led him to teach Design Technology in Birmingham, then South Wales and most recently in Cairo as a digital animation teacher at an international school.

The idea for My Salah Mat came to him in 2016 when he was watching his son learn to pray.

“Hamzah would have been four or five, and was struggling to do Sujud. So I was sitting on the sofa, in front of the TV and I had this vision in my head,” said Kamal.

“This was the start of an 18-month journey, from my original idea to the first-of-its-kind product it is today. When I was designing the mat, I remember thinking ‘I will probably never be in this position or have an idea like this again’, so it was a moment to seize and an opportunity to follow.

“It’s something that is so simple and should have been done long ago. It probably needed somebody from that religion to have grown up in this culture to be able to make it at this level.

“The central belief behind our company is that learning through play is essential when teaching faith and prayer. People don’t put emphasis on learning through play, even though this stuff existed during our prophet’s time. The prophet used to play with kids, so learning through play has always been there.”

My Salah Mat has now grown from a one-person passion project to a global brand, being sold in more than 24 different countries and translated into 15 languages.

Kamal added: “When I came back from Hajj [an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia] in 2010, praying five times a day was just so easy to do, and I always loved and still do enjoy praying, so I wanted to pass that onto my child.

“My hope for the prayer mat going forward is that it becomes a generationally loved tool for learning, something that adult Muslims can look back on and fondly remember as their first steps into spirituality. I hope that the generation that grows up using this prayer mat will grow up wanting to pray.”