Amr Abdel rahman Mohamed Aly Owais
Amr Abdulrahman was one of the most important programmers in Egypt. He was the General Director of MiMV Company which was renowned for the application and website I-phone Islam. One of his coworkers at the company wrote the following about him:
“Amr Abdulrahman was the finest brother and friend. He didn’t work with us for long as he had only transferred here 11 months ago, but Amr’s impact on all of us was huge. I got to know him at the mosque when he would act an Imam for our Taraweeh prayers. We performed I’tikaaf together during the month of Ramadan and would occasionally teach me Qur’an recitation. All of this preceded our work on the “I-phone Islam” website and before we had started our company.
But what I had noticed about Amr was his diligence, efficacy and his honesty. Days had gone by, I left the neighborhood, and distances between us had grown, but Allah had maintained the friendship and love for him in my heart. Years went by and Allah’s fate had decided that we would meet again.
In all honesty, Amr had surprised me with what he had gained in skills and experience over the years, not in our field of work which is technical, but in the field of management. I offered that he should join our company, but he refused and told me that his position and salary at Vodafone company was really great.
I told him I won’t tell you as Steve Jobs had said, “’Do you want to work in selling phone sim cards or do you want to join us in changing the world?’ Instead, I will tell you that if you left your job Vodafone won’t be affected, but if you joined I-phone Islam your efforts will reach the millions.” And indeed Amr had taken the difficult decision of leaving his work at a big corporate company and moving to a company that dreams of leaving its print not just on the Arab world but the world in general.
Amr became the Managing Director for the company and he started learning the technical parts, learning the stages of developing an application alongside his managerial responsibilities, and in a few months, Amr was skilled in the arts of the field. He brought joy into all of our hearts and at the same time was committed to strict work.
“If you wanted to remember Amr Abdulrahman you will find his voice alerting you to every call to prayer when the time neared. Amr had insisted on recording the voices for the application ‘Ela-Salaty’ in a professional voice recording studio and did not approve of the recording being done with equipment that wasn’t professional as he was convinced that a job well done is what makes for a great success.”
As for the Syrian developer, Mohamed El-Hasoun, (20 years’ old), he had wrote that the Engineer Amr Abdulrahman was the one who had pushed him to learn programming: “My name is Mohamed El-Hasoun, 20 years’ old, from Syria, a developer of iphone and ipad applications. I began learning programming with Swift Language four months prior without any programming or managerial background whatsoever… (the reasons that have made me a developer). The first reason (I learned programming)… is (Amr Abdulrahman) may he rest in peace, indeed, this person that I didn’t know and have never met before.
I had coincidentally saw a photo of him on Facebook with a short introduction about him that was only 5 lines long. He was knowledgeable in technical matters and he previously had a great part to play in I-phone Islam. He started on the long hard road of programming. Indeed, I wanted to be like this person, to be able to map out the road that would develop into a new journey. I take pride that we have an Arab Muslim developer that has the ability to prove himself in a world in which there is not much room left for Arab developers.”
One of the most circulated quotes that Engineer Amr Abdulrahman had written is the following:
“Don’t you ever say that tomorrow when I die, they will know my worth!
Choose to be stronger than this, live your life the right way, and forget about the words that will be spoken of you after you’re dead. Life has never stopped for anyone because someone had died and it’s not gonna stop for either me nor you. All we’ll ever get is a two-hour crying session, and a few days’ memorial, and a few years’ of being prayed for. Do tell, how many times do you pray for your dad’s grandfather?”
Engineer Amr Abdulrahman was the son of Dr. Abdulrahman Ali Owaise, the university professor at El-Azhar university, who was also killed in the same massacre. Engineer Amr remained in a coma for 83 days until he had met his Lord and followed his father as a martyr, if Allah intends, at the age of 29.