Privacy &
Research Terms

1. Who is responsible

Mushaf by Sedira is operated for research by Sedira Consultancies, United Arab Emirates ("Sedira", "we", "us"). Our privacy contact is privacy@sedira.ae. These terms explain your participation, how we use research information and the rights in recordings you choose to submit.

2. Your choice and acceptance

Participation is voluntary. After reading the initial notice, continuing with the app and submitting recordings means you agree to these Privacy & Research Terms. Where applicable, an authorised parent or guardian agrees for the participant. Research organisers handle eligibility, authority and any required parent/guardian arrangements outside the app. The app does not determine eligibility by age or replace those arrangements.

We record your participant ID, the terms version and acceptance time once. Individual recordings carry the applicable terms version automatically; you do not need to accept again for each surah. You can stop recording or leave before submitting. No payments or incentives are offered. Participation gives no entitlement to compensation, royalties, revenue, equity or ownership of Sedira's research outputs, without limiting rights that the law does not allow us to exclude.

3. Information we collect

We collect your voice recordings, age in whole years, sex, nationality and education level. We also keep a random participant ID, an internal authentication identifier, your terms acceptance, interface language, campaign and surah identifiers, recording dates/duration, audio format, file size, checksum, upload/completion status and limited technical information needed to run and protect the service. Cloud providers may process network information, such as IP addresses and service logs, to deliver and secure the service.

We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number, address, birth date or GPS location. We do not enable Firebase Analytics. If you contact us yourself, we will use the contact details and information you send to handle your request; they are not required to participate.

4. Your research identifier

Your submissions are associated with a random research ID rather than direct identity fields. This reduces the identifying information we collect, but does not make voice recordings anonymous: a voice or what is said can identify someone. Please avoid adding names or other personal details to your recording.

Your separate private recovery code helps us locate and verify the correct research record when you request assistance, recovery or deletion. Keep it private and retain a copy if you want to contact us after losing access to the app. The server stores a cryptographic hash, not the readable code. The public MSH participant ID alone does not authorise destructive deletion. A code does not itself trigger deletion or automatically recover an installation; Sedira handles legitimate requests with proportionate verification. We may need additional appropriate verification, but do not routinely require direct identity information to participate.

5. Qur'an research and resulting work

We may retain, copy, reproduce, process, analyse, annotate, classify, compare, excerpt, edit for research or presentation, transform and combine submitted recordings and associated research information with other material. We may build and validate datasets and derive research outputs. These purposes include Qur'an recitation and acoustic analysis, reproducibility, comparison, archiving, and developing Qur'an-related technology, products and services.

This includes non-commercial and commercial Qur'an research and development and commercialisation of resulting Qur'an-related research outputs, products, technologies and services. Research may use artificial intelligence and machine learning, including training, testing, evaluation, benchmarking and validation. These permissions concern Qur'an research and Qur'an-related work, not unrelated general-purpose advertising profiling.

6. Authorised sharing

Where useful or necessary for these purposes, we may share recordings and research information with authorised Sedira personnel, contractors, technical service providers, academic researchers, research institutions, research collaborators and technology partners. Access must be subject to reasonable confidentiality, data-use and access controls, with information limited to what is appropriate for the work. We may also disclose information where legally required. These terms do not make the complete raw corpus an unrestricted public dataset.

7. Short excerpts in communications

Selected short excerpts of submitted recitations may be used in Mushaf by Sedira or Sedira demonstrations, presentations, communications, promotional and marketing material and advertisements relating to Qur'an research or resulting Qur'an-related products and services. These excerpts may be heard publicly. We do not attach participant names, email addresses or phone numbers to them. A voice may nevertheless be recognisable. Public use remains subject to applicable privacy rights and other legal requirements; the recording licence is not a waiver of those protections.

8. Rights in submitted recordings

To the maximum extent legally permitted, on submission you assign to Sedira the transferable rights you hold in the submitted recording that are required for the purposes in sections 5–7. Where assignment is unavailable or ineffective, you grant Sedira a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, transferable and sublicensable licence to exercise those rights for those purposes, including the activities described above, authorised sharing, and commercial and non-commercial Qur'an-related work.

This applies only to rights you can lawfully grant. It does not assign ownership of the Qur'an, transfer non-transferable rights, or remove any statutory privacy, data-protection or other rights that cannot legally be waived. The licence and assignment do not by themselves override restrictions on processing personal data. Where an authorised parent or guardian acts, their agreement is limited to the authority and rights they can lawfully exercise. These terms do not retrospectively expand permissions for recordings submitted under an earlier notice.

9. Long-term research retention

Recordings and associated research information may be retained for as long as they remain useful for Qur'an research, validation, reproducibility, model development, comparison, archival purposes or resulting Qur'an-related work. This may include indefinite retention, subject to applicable law. There is no fixed calendar deletion deadline. We review continued use and retention against those purposes and legal requirements, and delete or appropriately anonymise information when retention is no longer justified. Voice recordings linked to a random ID are not treated as anonymous merely because names are absent.

10. Security and storage

We use private cloud storage, authenticated access, participant isolation and access rules to help protect research information. Audio uploads are checked against their recorded checksum. No system can guarantee absolute security. Recordings awaiting upload and local copies remain in the app's private device storage; protect access to your device. Uninstalling or clearing the app removes local records and the local recovery code but does not delete recordings already submitted to Sedira.

11. Your privacy rights and requests

Depending on the law that applies, you may have rights to information, access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection, portability, withdrawal of consent and complaint to the competent authority. None of these terms excludes rights that cannot legally be waived. Where processing relies on consent, you may withdraw it; withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of prior processing. A continuing intellectual-property licence does not remove an applicable right to stop personal-data processing.

Contact privacy@sedira.ae to ask about your record, request deletion or recovery, withdraw consent or exercise an applicable right. Include your private recovery code if available, and tell us what you would like us to do. Keep it out of public messages. If it is unavailable, contact us so we can discuss proportionate alternatives; lack of the code does not automatically remove statutory rights. We will assess the request, applicable exceptions and any lawful research or other retention duties, respond within applicable legal time limits and explain the outcome. We will not promise unconditional immediate deletion where the law provides an exception, nor refuse a valid request merely because the corpus is intended for long-term research. Truly anonymous aggregate results may no longer be traceable to an individual; we will explain any relevant limits rather than assume them.

12. Cloud and international processing

The current Firebase research database, Storage bucket and callable Functions are configured in London, United Kingdom (europe-west2). Authentication, service operations and authorised collaborators may process information in other countries. Sedira is responsible for ensuring that cross-border processing and sharing meet applicable legal requirements, with appropriate safeguards or another permitted basis. International processing does not remove your applicable rights.

13. Updates and contact

The version accepted with a submission is retained for auditability. A later version will not silently broaden permissions for earlier submissions. These terms are governed by the applicable laws of the United Arab Emirates, without excluding mandatory protections that apply elsewhere.

For privacy, deletion, recovery or questions about the research: privacy@sedira.ae Operator: Sedira Consultancies, United Arab Emirates.