Toward software engineering principles based on Islamic ethical values

Abstract

Software is the core for computer-based applications which became an essential part for critical control systems, health and human life guard systems, financial and banking systems, educational and other system related to different aspects of human life. It requires qualified software engineers professionally and ethically. L.R and survey results show that software engineering professionals facing several ethical related problems which are costly, harmful and affected high ratio of people. Professional organizations like ACM, IEEE, ABET and CSAC have established codes of ethics to help software engineering professionals to understand and manage their ethical responsibilities. Islam (Holy Qurapsilan and Sunnah) considers ethics an essential factor to build individuals and society. Islamic Ethics are set of moral principles and guidance that recognizes what is right behavior from wrong, which are comprehensive, stable, fair, and historically prove success in building ethically great society. The 1.3 billions of Muslims with 10s of thousands of software engineers should have an effective leading role in software engineering and life, which requires understanding and implementing Islamic ethics. This paper is a framework for modeling software engineering principles based on Islamic ethics. It include: adopting new software engineering principles based on Islamic values, producing an enhanced software engineering curriculums with ethical values, developing a Web-based database for comprehensive Islamic ethics, building an evaluation model for software engineering. Based on Islamic ethical values, we produce a preliminary version of software engineering principles besides offering guide lines for software engineering curriculum enhancement.