Sarahah The App For Honesty

The app created to create honesty amongst employees, so that colleagues, staffs, and bosses could give an honest feedback on their work-related has gained huge popularity.

What Is Sarahah

The app, called Sarahah, which roughly translates into ‘honesty’ in Arabic, was created originally to promote honest feedback amongst employees whose culture is known for courtesy more than honesty. Staffs are often held back from speaking their minds due to their Eastern culture of respect for the elders, and those in authority.

Sarahah’s Origin

Specifically, the app was created by a Saudi business analyst, in his spare time, for his co-workers and those working in Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, the app has gained worldwide popularity beyond its intended benefit.

The creator, Zain al-Abidin Tawfiq, is still working at his day job and has not started on a startup company for his app development yet.

While Sarahah has gained huge popularity worldwide, the Muslims in general have also competed in the tech fields, from the all-girls Afghan team creating robots, to Wahed Invest, an Islamic robo-advisor, to other apps that are specifically for Muslims practising Islam.

Millions of Downloads

The app currently has 85 million downloads, with the main downloaded country being the US and the UK. Given that it was only published less than a year ago, in October 2016, this is considered a phenomenal growth for an app. As the app works together with a SnapChat account, and most of the users on SnapChat consists of the younger generation, the app is being used by US teenagers to send anonymous messages, and some of them misuse it for cyber-bullying.

Not The First Anonymous Messaging App

Sarahah has taken the app world by storm with its anonymous messaging app. However, there have been other anonymous messaging apps before, such as ask.fm, Yik Yak, Secret, and Whisper but none reached such a fast and high volume growth as Sarahah. It is a number one app in the Apple App Store in the US, UK, and other English speaking countries.

Sarahah was first released to the Arabic speaking world, beyond just for the corporate usage by its creator. Due to their culture in the Middle East, Sarahah became a hot app to have, as it allows for real honest messages being given without being culturally held-back, and some romantic messages, where traditionally men and women don’t mix freely.

Watch Out Cyberbullies, Sarahah Will Reveal You

According to this interview, the founder of the app has confirmed that the app will reveal the identity of the sender if the sender breaches the terms and conditions of the app. This is intended to curb misuse of Sarahah for cyberbullying cases.

So if you use the app for positive or constructive messages, then go ahead, your identity is safe.

Farah I, Writer & Researcher

Farah Ishak is a Content Writer at Halalop. She grew up in the United Kingdom where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Management. Later, she completed her MBA and held senior-level positions in Malaysian based MNC. She left the corporate world to be with her young kids. She is passionate about issues concerning Muslim women, Startups and Muslim businesses in general.