Evaluation of Quality Principles from the Islamic Perspective

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Quality is a phenomenon whose existence dates back to the first period of human history. Before the industrial revolution, quality was realized through mutual interaction between the person producing the service or the product and the customer. Customer's satisfaction was an important factor in determining the quality. In the development of quality, which had many different and simple applications in the past, a new era started with the industrial revolution, and new developments occurred in the principles, visibility, and applications of quality. In this period, with an increase in products and services, the masters working in production started to work in the background, and the direct contact between the producer and the customer was weakened and even disappeared. As a result of this, employers offering products and services developed new systems such as inspection, statistical quality control, and total quality management to ensure quality. Quality has reached its current form with total quality management. Studies in this field continue to expand and increase in many areas such as education and health. The understanding of quality has spread throughout the world with the development of communication and transportation facilities and the spread of global trade, and eventually, it has come to a position that affects many societies, including Muslims. Muslims, who have trained many important philosophers and scientists in many fields throughout history, also established many major and developed states and pioneered many areas of life. At this point, the fact that Muslims are at the center of important progress and developments in every field in a period and environment where there is no modern understanding of quality necessitates investigating the motivation behind this situation. Likewise, it makes it necessary to answer the questions; "Do the issues known as quality principles take place in the set of rules and principles brought by Islam?", “To what extent are the principles of quality compatible with the principles of Islam?” For this reason, in this study, it is aimed to examine the quality, its principles, and their development processes, to evaluate them within the framework of Islamic principles, and to determine the perspective of Islam on this issue. The study is limited to the evaluation of the planning, implementation, control, and precautionary phases of the Plan-do-check-act cycle (PDCA cycle), which focus on quality, customer orientation, the leadership of the senior management, continuous improvement, and its mechanism. Unlike previous studies, it is thought that the study, which is evaluated in terms of Islamic principles based on the principles of total quality management, will contribute to the literature with this dimension. Moreover, it is thought that it will support the awareness of quality principles that contributed to the advancements made by Muslims in many fields, especially in science, and will also provide Muslims with a perspective on today's quality understanding. In this study, studies and documents on today's quality and principles were used. Primary sources were also used by reaching the works of many experts on the subject, especially Edward Deming, who is known as the pioneer of quality, and today's academic studies were taken into consideration and used. The evaluation of quality principles was made within the framework of the Qurʾān and Sunnah, which are the main sources of Islam. During the study, a number of verses and ḥadīths related to quality principles were used, some examples from the Qurʾān and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muḥammad were given, considering that this would increase the volume of the study, and not all of the verses and ḥadīths were mentioned. At the end of the study, it has been found that “the leadership of the top management, customer centricity, continuous improvement, doing the works firstly with the stakeholders and in accordance with the plan, obtaining results by following the applications, evaluating the obtained results together with the relevant internal and external stakeholders and making improvements in the final step” which are among the principles of quality take place among the principles that Islam has set, with different dimensions. Likewise, it has been understood that the religious teachings and the practices of the Prophet Muḥammad are an important source of motivation for Muslims to achieve significant success and to do quality work.