The inspiration for this project arose from the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) known as Lexical Semantics, which focuses on understanding the different senses or meanings that a word can represent based on its context. A word can have multiple senses or interpretations, and a pairing of a word form with its specific sense is known as "lexeme." For example, the word "bank" can denote a financial institution or the side of a river.
During my course of studying Islam, I discovered that many Islamic terms also exhibit different meanings based on the context in which they are used. For instance, terms like "ijtihad" can have distinct interpretations in classical Islamic thought compared to modernist perspectives. This realization sparked an interest in building a model capable of capturing these subtle differences in meaning within the Islamic context. To achieve this, the project aims to leverage a model that can learn the correct meaning of Islamic words from their context using a lexical database containing English word senses and their relations. WordNet, a well-known lexical database in the NLP domain, serves as an inspiration due to its structure and functionality. However, WordNet does not sufficiently cover the wide array of Islamic terms I want to explore. For instance, it lacks comprehensive definitions for terms like "ijtihad" that encompass various nuanced interpretations.
Motivated by WordNet's infrastructure and realizing the need for a more tailored resource, I decided to build my own mini Islamic WordNet. This customized Islamic WordNet will incorporate a diverse range of Islamic terms and their multiple interpretations to enable the model to learn the context of unseen data effectively. In addition, I incorporated terms that may not have multiple meanings but are frequently confused with various definitions in texts. By creating a specialized Islamic WordNet and developing a model that utilizes this resource, the project aspires to enhance the understanding of Islamic terminology within various contexts and offer a valuable tool for anyone seeking to explore the intricacies of Islamic concepts and interpretations.