Big Data: New Development Opportunities in Islamic Studies

Abstract

A Quranic researcher's personality should be identified by the scientific characters because his/her efforts should be based on evidence and truth to acquire knowledge, And without any doubt, the basic role here is to transform the Quranic givens to realistic values that shapes the society into a better place, by trying to provide solutions for the problems and crises that our society is passing through, and develop our society's issues based on the Quranic visions. Moreover, based on our belief that it is necessary to start the development from the needs of the society, and in order for the Quranic researcher to complete this role in the perfect and most delightful way, this paper represents a new flame that will surely help in strengthening the researcher's ability, and in providing new technological techniques and tools of “Data Science" and specifically “Big Data", in order to provide Quranic students and institutions a huge power that will lead to analyze the new era's situations and needs. Data Science is the process of extracting data from different sources to detect the directions and visions that represents it. This whole process leads us to produce and come up with the right techniques and decisions in any issue that is tackled. However, when such science is putting in the hands of a Quranic sciences researcher, we will be investing a productive mentality, and getting a step closer to treat the polarity that the Muslim lives trying to connect between theories and the practical reality. This paper studies the greatest profit that can be produced by the Data Science in understanding and analyzing the Islamic reality. This paper can also be a dependable research that a researcher can rely on through his/her Quranic studies so he/she can start with eliminating the society's worries through knowing the major issues to be handled, detecting the most popular Quranic-understanding misconceptions, analyzing the cultural and social backgrounds that affects the Islamic area, and studying the correlation for different phenomenon. We emphasize in this paper the new role that the Quranic mentalities of students and institutions should play on account the digital civilization that we are facing, through getting the help from the Quranic culture and education first, and the technological revolution second, specifically the Data Science. Since this position is the first of its kind in the Quranic sciences field, we hope that it resembles a start in the path of development and improvement so this goal can be achieved in the few coming years.