The Differences
What we left out, and why
Most recovery apps compete on features. We compete on honesty. Every mechanic in P-Minus either has evidence behind it or says plainly that its grounding is the tradition. Here is what did not make the cut, and what we built instead.
Left Out
Not research-backed, not in the app
These features are everywhere in this market. None of them carries evidence, and several work against recovery. They stay out, permanently.
| Feature | Common elsewhere | Why it is not in P-Minus |
|---|---|---|
| Content blockers | Built-in porn blockers and enforced device supervision. | Muraqabah is knowing that Allah sees you. Bolting a software watcher on top swaps the One who sees for a piece of code, and lets you feel guarded without being changed. The covenant only means something if it holds when nothing is checking. |
| Streaks and day counters | Real-time streaks, milestone badges, day counts front and centre. | A day count measures an absence, and counting an absence makes one slip the destruction of an achievement. That is the wrong shape for tawba. There is no direct evidence streaks help recovery; P-Minus tracks constancy instead, and a lapse never zeroes anything. |
| AI companions | A chatbot that listens without judgment and reframes your thoughts on demand. | It builds on whatever premise you give it and hands your own story back as flattery. Rehearsing the same problem with a confidant is a documented risk factor for depression and anxiety. P-Minus sends you to a person instead. The help button shows someone you chose and the words you wrote to say to them. |
| Growth visuals | A tree, garden, or avatar that grows with your progress. | Decoration that carries no evidence and turns the state of the heart into a score. There is no version of this that is more than decoration. |
| Leaderboards and clans | Community rankings, team competitions, public scores. | Competition mechanics imported from games, not from any treatment evidence. Shame is the thing most likely to make a person stop returning, so nothing in P-Minus ranks you against anyone. |
The Foundation
Islamic psychology, not Islamic decoration
Other Muslim apps place Islamic content on top of secular mechanics. P-Minus rebuilds the foundation itself: the model of the person, the program spine, the theology.
| Question | Typical Muslim recovery app | P-Minus |
|---|---|---|
| Model of the person | A CBT calendar with Qur’an quotes layered on top. Islamic content decorating a secular mechanism. | We built the program on the classical model of the soul: nafs, qalb, aql, ruh. Every task is tagged to the aspect it works on. The anthropology is Islamized, not just the wallpaper. |
| Program spine | A 90 or 100 day "rewiring" calendar with no basis in any trial. | The Islamized twelve steps, the one spiritual format with a significant result against active comparators in controlled trials. |
| Evidence | Vendor self-reported success statistics, published nowhere peer-reviewed. | Every task carries an evidence label stating plainly whether its grounding is meta-analytic, trial-level, practitioner precedent, or tradition alone. |
| Theology | The AA and CBT framing left untouched underneath the Islamic wording. | Aqidah reshapes step one. Power belongs to Allah, so "powerless" is gone. Dhikr replaces meditation in step eleven. Huquq al-ibad, the rights of others, grounds step nine. |
| When you slip | The streak resets to zero and the app makes sure you feel it. | A mercy-forward tawba flow: renew your intention, log the trigger, resume your step. No reset, no demotion, no shaming copy. Defeat is only ceasing to return. |
Plain Words
The buzzword decoder
The words that sell porn addiction apps, and what is actually behind them.
| The claim | What it actually means | What we do instead |
|---|---|---|
| "Brain rewiring" | Not a clinical term. No trial supports a fixed 90 or 100 day rewiring calendar. The number comes from recovery forums, not research. | We name the mechanism each task uses and label the evidence behind it, at the level the evidence supports. |
| "CBT-based" | As a sticker, nothing. Any app can claim it when no technique is named and no evidence is attached to anything specific. | We use specific CBT and ACT techniques, and each one carries its own evidence label you can read. |
| "X% success rate" | Vendor self-report. The headline numbers in this market have no peer-reviewed evaluation behind them. | We claim only what controlled research supports, and say plainly when a practice is grounded in tradition rather than trials. |
| "AI coach" | A next-word predictor. It adopts your tone, agrees with your premise, and stops saying whatever you signal you do not want to hear. | A real person. Your rescue card holds someone you trust and the words you wrote to say to them, one tap from the help button. |
| "Neuroscience-backed" | Dopamine talk is an explanation, not an intervention. Naming a neurotransmitter does not make a feature therapeutic. | We state what a mechanism does and how strong its evidence is, and we make no bigger claim than that. |
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No streak shame, no invented neuroscience, no feature that only exists to keep you opening the app.
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