Islam and Society: Role of the Departments of Islamic Studies, an Analytical Study

This study elaborates the connection between Islam and society and the role of Islam in the formulation and reformation of a society. This research highlights the need and the significance of the concept of developing a linkage between the religious and otherwise classes of society. The study primarily focuses on the role and the influence of the departments of Islamic studies in Pakistani universities in defusing tensions and promoting peace and hormony among various classes of society. The study includes an analysis of the visions, mission statements and the objectives of the various departments of Islamic studies in leading universities of the country. The article highlights the system of education in Islam and the problems in the system of education of Pakistan which play a part in the role of the departments of Islamic studies. The research also focuses on the role of the students and the teachers of the departments of Islamic studies in the light of Islamic teachings.

Digital Right Protection of Relational Databases

Design and development of knowledge-preserving and robust water- marking techniques for digital ownership rights protection of relational databases is an active area of research. In this dissertation, various dis- ciplines have been used to design and develop watermarking techniques which ensure knowledge-preserving and robustness characteristics of wa- termarking techniques by bringing tolerable distortions in the original data. Different parameters are used to define data distortions in terms of information loss as a result of watermarking. The intelligent min- ing techniques and statistical measures have been utilized to define and measure information loss after watermark embedding in the relational databases. The data owner usually defines the usability constraints to control this information loss. These usability constraints in turn iden- tify the available bandwidth for watermark embedding. The watermark decoding accuracy of a watermarking algorithm generally depends on this bandwidth; larger the bandwidth the better the decoding accuracy (watermark robustness) and vice versa. However, this dissertation pro- poses a model to make the watermark decoding accuracy independent of this bandwidth and hence the usability constraints; as a result, max- imum decoding accuracy can be achieved even with very tight usability constraints and minimum data distortions. Such mechanism also helps to preserve the knowledge in the databases to a maximum level; as a consequence, the classification results for such databases are also pre- served after watermark embedding. In the pilot study, empirical study and formal modeling have been used to prove the knowledge-preserving and robustness characteristics of the proposed watermarking techniques for digital right protection.