An interactive prayer mat has been launched to teach children and new Muslims how to pray.

My Salah Mat includes sounds, colours, touch sensitive pads and images as a guide to learning how to pray.

Kamal Ali said he created the prayer mat after his own son struggled to grasp the various praying positions.

Kamal said,“My Salah Mat is a unique concept. My son Hamzah was finding it difficult when learning how to pray with the various positions of salat, such as placing the nose and hands on the floor correctly.

“That’s when I thought if there were illustrations on the prayer mat, this would provide a guide and help children to understand what to do.”

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Kamal went on to develop this idea while thinking about how to convey the basics to children, such as ruku and the initial idea was to add graphical illustrations around the edge of the prayer mat which were then made to be touch sensitive.

 “Through designing a child friendly interactive prayer mat with sounds, colours and images that are appealing to children, I realised that the Muslim prayer could be made into something fun and joyful.

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“This is particularly important considering that many children are brought up to be forced into praying and sometimes see it as a chore.

“You sit down with your children and discuss the different elements of it. You pray together, you the parent are the first person in your childs life to teach them salah, in a fun, interactive and easy way. In still the beauty of salah into the hearts of your children.”

Kamal added that his aim is to create the prayer mat in different languages.

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“My vision is to produce it in every language. Someone called me from Sri Lanka and asked if I could make it in the Tamil and Sinhala languages and it clicked that this prayer mat could be produced in many different languages and dialects.

“Although this may reduce the profit I make, it would be amazing.

“The beauty of it is that it could be used to teach the next generation to love salah, one of the pillars of Islam.”