International Muslim Association of Scientists and Engineers

Constellations - Vol. 6, No. 1, Jan 2015 - Jul 2015 (Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1436 – Ramadan 1436)

Assalāmu ‘alaikum wa rahmatullāhi wa barakātuhu,

This is the first edition since we changed from being a quarterly to a half-yearly publication. Considering the longer lead time to this issue, much has happened that has taken the world by storm. Sadly most of these events have involved Muslims with the worst affected areas being predominantly in the Muslim world.

It is difficult to say who is at fault and thus we try our best to honour the facts and avoid subscribing to any conspiracy theories, no matter how enticing this may be. We attempt to follow the Qur’anic principle of concentrating on ourselves and leaving the rest to Allah to dispose of in a way that befits His Wisdom.

This edition of Constellations features articles on Charlie Hebdo by Shafiq Morton and Reforming Islam by Maryam Sakeenah, which provide food for thought for our readers, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Michael Finesilver, in his usual thought-provoking manner, writes a controversial piece on light which most science readers would find interesting and challenging. Our Inflection and Reflection series once again offer opportunities for introspection as members of humanity, especially Muslims. The massacre of school children in Peshawar and the recent government sanctioned killing of opposition activists in Dhaka share a common brutality and lack of respect for human dignity. By reflecting on these appalling incidents it is hoped that we can gain the courage to ponder upon vital human questions regardless of the source or justification of these crimes. In the IMASE Papers section we have started a new series on Science Parks and discuss how they can serve as a collaborative space to stimulate innovation and economic development.

Please click HERE to download the publication (1.85 MP pdf).

Wassalām,

IMASE Team (www.imase.org)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[Event] The Quranic Arabic Corpus Project

We would like to draw the attentions of colleagues and friends to a valuable opportunity to hear from Dr Kais Dukes, the man behind the Quranic Arabic Corpus Project . Organised by Islamic Courses, an innovating community-based network from East London, and supported also by Ibn Jabal Institute of Arabic language training and Ebrahim College, an institute of higher Islamic learning, this event will outline the objectives and ambitions of this exciting web-based, and collective, intellectual venture.

Bringing advanced linguistics and computer science together to aid understanding and exploration of the Qur'an, Dr Kais Dukes has made a widely acknowledged contribution to contemporary and online Muslim knowledge culture.

Used by over 2 million people each year, the Quranic Arabic Corpus is an annotated linguistic resource consisting of 77,430 words of Quranic Arabic. The project aims to provide morphological and syntactic annotations for researchers wanting to study the language of the Quran.

The grammatical analysis helps readers further in uncovering the detailed intended meanings of each verse and sentence. Each word of the Quran is tagged with its part-of-speech as well as multiple morphological features. Unlike other annotated Arabic corpora, the grammar framework adopted by the Quranic Corpus is the traditional Arabic grammar of i’rab (إﻋﺮﺍﺏ).

Presentation Outline

In this presentation, Dr Kais will talk about the project, its objectives and impact and future ambitions and how it can help those studying Quran and arabic in general and possibilities into moving to hadith corpus. This project is particularly of importance to Quran teachers, arabic teachers, academics of Quranic Studies and anyone interested in computational linguistics with potential if used properly revolutionize study and learning of Classical Arabic online.

About the presenter

Dr Kais Dukes was born to an English father who converted to Islam and Saudi mother, and grew up bilingual. He graduated and completed his Masters at Imperial College, and PhD Computer Science, University of Leeds on Quranic Arabic natural language processing with machine learning and statistical parsing. For the wide and global impact of his PhD research he was awarded Postgraduate Researcher of the Year (2011) and this year, PhD Thesis Research Excellence Award (2014) from the University of Leeds. As Artificial Intelligence scientist and software developer, in particular .NET Framework enthusiast, Dukes began work in the early 2000s on one of the world’s largest financial software systems using the framework and has worked with many investment banks and financial institutions and his work was awarded the Winner of the Banking Technology Awards (2012). Currently he works as a software engineer in an investment bank and lives with his wife and children in London.

Event Details

Date: Saturday 11th October 2014 Time: 5pm – 6.30pm

Venue: Ebrahim College, 80 Greenfield Road, London, E1 1EJ

Nearest Tube: Whitechapel

Constellations - Vol. 5, No. 2, July 2014 - Jan 2015 (Ramaḍān 1435 - Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1436)

Assalāmu ‘alaikum wa rahmatullāhi wa barakātuhu,

This issue of Constellations features a photo essay of the 2006 war in Lebanon. It would seem that war is currently the norm in the Middle East, and we hope, work and pray for an enduring and just peace to break out in the region. Sulayman Tan Eng Tong’s Human Governance series continues with two pieces; on the value of organisational rules and principles and compassionate leadership. Shafiq Morton’s reflection on navigating and engaging in a world filled with the noise and anger of social media with dignity is insightful, and well worth working into every day practices.

Inflection intervenes on the educational plane poetically, while Professor Mall’s Reflection relates poignant experiences of the essence of education along his own journey as an academic surgeon. Ending on a biophysical note, from a tradition of knowledge we too rarely feature, Abu Hanifah explores the impacts of vibrations from the environment on the human being and introduces the yogic concept of chakra, in the Journal section.

This edition is our eighteenth over the five years we have been running and so far we have published over 1000 pages of content on a voluntary basis. As we mentioned last time, the next edition will be out in six months as Constellations is now biannually published. Facilitating societal, ecological and technological depth in Muslim Societies today remains an important challenge. We hope to be able to provide improved content for your reading pleasure and connect with wider readerships.

Please click HERE to download the publication (1.6 MP pdf).