1 of the things I've noticed when giving Dawah or showing references especially to Muslims is that they say "We take from books, not the internet & websites" & to sometimes find the references mentioned in the books itself is sometimes hard as their are different translations & so on
So 1 thing I feel which would definitely make your website stand out is if you can provide picture scans from the books as it will be really beneficial to myself & I'm sure to many others who have the same issue as me
I understand it might be extra work but I genuinely feel it would be worth it & make your website seem more beneficial & trustworthy compared to others
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah, and thank you sincerely for your thoughtful suggestion.
You are absolutely right — having image scans from the actual books is extremely useful, especially when giving da‘wah or clarifying references. Alhamdulillah, we already do this for selected and important topics, and you can see these articles with source-scans here:
https://en.tohed.com/forums/research-articles-with-source-scans.71/
However, it simply isn’t possible to provide scans for
every article. Our platform currently has around
12,000 articles, and we add
600–700 new articles every month. Many individual articles exceed
10,000 words and contain
hundreds of references, so attaching scans for every reference would require an extraordinary amount of time, labour, and expenditure.
We genuinely appreciate when forum members contribute by adding value — posting scans, sharing online links to the relevant hadiths, or uploading reference screenshots beneath articles. Da‘wah is a collective responsibility, and every small contribution strengthens the work.
Also, just so everyone understands the reality behind the scenes:
We operate this forum with
very limited resources. There is no group, institute, or organization backing us. It is the effort of a single person supported by a small team of
six hired staff, whose salaries must be paid along with all hosting costs, security systems, XenForo annual licenses, design and maintenance charges, app development costs, and many other operational expenses. These combined create a very high monthly financial burden.
I have personally run the Urdu website since
2014 and the English forum for the past
three years. In over
11 years, we have not received a single penny in donations, even though donation banners were displayed for a while. Many people assume that large amounts of Riyals or Dollars come in, but this is not the case at all. We eventually removed the donation banners because they served no real purpose.
With such limited means, we are forced to prioritize our efforts carefully.
At present, our major priorities include:
- Translating our Urdu Quran portal (https://tohed.com/quran-tafsir/) into English — which contains
• 3 Urdu translations
• 3 word-by-word translations
• 4 extremely beneficial tafseers rarely found in English
This alone is a massive undertaking and a major milestone we hope to achieve.
- Translating the commentary of 33 Hadith books available on our Urdu site (https://tohed.com/hadith/).
These scholarly commentaries address contemporary issues of aqeedah and fiqh in a way very few English resources do. Making this knowledge accessible in English is another huge goal.
- Developing a full English Flutter app, similar to the Urdu app that allows offline reading of all content.
Again, a large and costly project.
- Proper categorization of English articles, similar to our Urdu website.
- A powerful Python-based search engine to help users locate specific content efficiently.
And many other long-term improvements — all of which require time, manpower, and resources that are currently far beyond what we possess.
So while we completely agree that book scans are beneficial — and we already provide them where feasible — producing them for every article is far beyond our present capabilities.
We ask Allah to give us the ability, resources, and ease to continue improving step by step.
May Allah bless you for your suggestion and concern. Your feedback is always welcome.
