Verification of Qur’anic Quotations Embedded in Online Arabic and Islamic Websites

Abstract

     With the Internet penetration in the Middle East exceeding the world’s average penetration and the growth of Internet users exceeding the 2000% in the last decade, the number of Arabic documents online has seen an exponential growth.  Therefore, with the increase of Arabic online publications, the presence of Qur’anic quotations in online articles is becoming more notable.  However, very few online documents use complete diacritics and Tajweed symbols for all words. Therefore, the verification of the quoted Quran text, the diacritics and the Tajweed symbols is essential for verse authenticity checking.  In this paper, a verification algorithm, is proposed in order to verify the authenticity of Qur’anic quotes/verses (including full and partial verses). The system developed was tested, using Qur’an quotes found in online Arabic documents and proved to be effective in detecting any tampering or unintentional mistakes during the dissemination of such documents.