This paper aims at investigating comparatively the ethical orientation of information technology professionals in the Middle East and the United States. It tests for attitudes toward and awareness of ethically-related issues, namely intellectual property, privacy and other general ethical IT aspects. In addition, through a comparison between the two regions, this paper intends to examine whether differences in IT professional demographics and characteristics, including gender and academic level, have any impact on attitudes to business ethics. A ttest is used to (...) establish significant differences between the targeted samples, while an ANOVA F-test is conducted to determine significant differences among the sample countries on a group basis. The results show a general awareness of ethical issues concerning information technology, and no significant differences are found between the two samples. However, different ethical attitudes are reported among respondents in terms of their reactions to the targeted IT ethical aspects. On an individual sample basis, the results about gender support the claim that male and female respondents are different, while mixed results are revealed for the influence of academic level on attitudes towards IT ethics. For intellectual property, the results are significant regarding ethical attitude differences between Middle-Eastern professionals and their counterparts in the US, while no significance differences are reported in terms of privacy. (shrink)

This paper aims at investigating the perceived difference between ethics and IT ethics in college students. The study mainly investigates whether university students in the Middle East and their counterpart in the USA hold the same ethical values both in a traditional context and in an IT context. The study also investigates possible differences in students’ ethics considering their level of study and whether they have prior business ethics knowledge or not. Furthermore, the study controls for possible self-others bias in (...) students’ responses to ethical issues by addressing some ethical issues where the respondent is the subject of the issue and other ethical issues where someone other than the respondent is the subject of the issue. Questionnaires were administered to university students in the USA and in several Middle East countries. A total of 401 usable questionnaires were returned. The study found that both the USA and the Middle East students have statistically significant lower ethical intention scores when addressing ethical issues in an IT context compared to traditional non-IT context. This pattern was consistent regardless of the students’ level of study and their prior knowledge of business ethics, and taking into consideration self-others bias. Additionally, it was found that graduate students have higher IT as well as non-IT ethical intentions compared to undergraduate students, however, it was found that the students’ prior business ethics knowledge did not affect the students’ ethical intention scores. Self-other bias was found to act in opposite directions for ethical issues in an IT context compared to ethical issues in a traditional context. For ethical issues within IT-context, students were less strict with themselves while they were stricter with others. For ethical issues within traditional non-IT context, students were stricter with themselves, while they were less strict with others. Finally, the study found that while students both in the USA and in the Middle East disagree with unethical IT as well as non-IT conducts, the degree to which they disagree with the unethical behavior significantly differ, where USA students were found to be significantly stricter with their disagreement. (shrink)

The topic of The Prophets' Languages has led to a broad interest due to the sacred status of the Prophets. It has been of interest to people of all religious and social orientations. Despite the complexity of this topic and the necessity of studying it from various aspects such as archaeology and the study of ancient calligraphy, we limited our study to Islamic sources and references only. We extrapolated what was mentioned in these books. Other than the Holy Qur’ān, it (...) will be concerned with books of interpretation, history, biography, hadith, its explanations, language books, etc. This study has been divided into three main points, an introduction, and a conclusion. The first point dealt with the origin of the languages spoken by the Prophets (peace be upon them) and their proximity to each other: Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. All of these languages belong to the Semitic language. In terms of their convergence and similarity with each other, some linguists considered it dialects of one language, the Semitic language of origin. It has branched out from it as a result of the expansion, development, and development of life. Looking at today, the dialects of the Arabs in Egypt, Morocco, Jazira, the Levant, and Iraq, each branched out and most of it emerged from the mother tongue Arabic. There is a discussion among researchers on which of the languages are closer to the Semitic language. Four languages are listed as possibilities: Hebrew, Babylonian, Assyrian, Syriac, and Arabic. The truth is that it is not easy to get to know the origin of the Semitic language, and everything that has been said is not outside the circle of speculation because of the loss of definitive evidence and the temporal dimension. As for the second point, this study investigated the linguistic geography that the Semitic language covered and spread in, by tracking the people who spoke the Semitic language, their places of residence, and their influence, as all of them settled in the Near East and its vicinity. If we look at the Semitic language, with its eastern and western branches, we see that it was concentrated in Babylon, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Yemen, the Levant, and Jerusalem regions, and among the most famous tribes and nations that settled in this region are Saba, Himyar, Ad, Thamud, Jirhm, Samaria, Nabat, the people of Palmyra and others. Mostly likely, the Arabian Peninsula is the cradle of the Semitic people, although some say that Abyssinia was the cradle of the first Semites. In the third point, the number of prophets and messengers mentioned in the Noble Qur’ān was enumerated in clear terms. Among the twenty-five prophets are the following: Adam, Idris, Noah, Hood, Saleh, Lot, Ibrahim, Ismail, Ishaq, Jacob, Yusef, Shuaib, Ayyub, Dhu al-Kifl, Yunus, Moses, Aaron, Elias, Al-Isa, David, Solomon, Zakaria, Yahya, Jesus, and Muhammad (peace be upon them). The study of this point came by following the inductive and deductive approach, whereby the first approach is based on extrapolating the life of each prophet in isolation from others in detail, tracing his life, place of living, and residence, whom he married etc. The deductive method relied on deducing the language that each of the prophets (peace be upon them) spoke. Some prophets mentioned the name of the language in which he spoke in the Islamic sources. This study concluded that of the prophets mentioned in the Noble Qur’ān, seven of them spoke the Syriac language, three of them spoke the ancient Egyptian language (Coptic), eighteen of them spoke the Hebrew language, three of them spoke the Aramaic language, and nine of them spoke in Arabic. Some of the prophets spoke one language while others spoke more than one language due to their numerous travels and the people they interacted with. This study is considered a preliminary study to open the field for in-depth studies for researchers in this field, and every part mentioned in this research is suitable for being an independent scientific study in its own right. (shrink)

İslam felsefesi geleneğinde Meşşâî filozoflar, görüşlerinin tutarsız olduğu iddiasıyla Gazzâlî’nin Tehâfüt adlı eserinde ciddi bir eleştiriye maruz kalmışlardır. İslâm felsefesinin yapısal dönüşümüne ön ayak olan bu eser İslâm düşüncesinde tehâfüt geleneğinin de kaynağı niteliğindedir. Osmanlı dönemi İslam felsefesi; kelâm, felsefe ve tasavvuf disiplinlerinin, konu, amaç ve metot bakımından yakınlaştığı multidisipliner bir yapı arz etmektedir. Bununla birlikte o, genel olarak Gazzâlî düşüncesinin baskın olduğu bir geleneğin devamıdır. Bu felsefe, Fatih Sultan Mehmed’in, Gazzâlî’nin Tehâfüt adlı eserini daha anlaşılır kılacak bir eserin yazılmasını (...) emrettiği bir yarışmayla ivme kazanmıştır. Söz konusu bu yarışmada Hocazâde’nin Tehâfütü’l-felâsife’si ile Ali et-Tûsî’nin Kitâbu’z-Zuhr’u rekabet etmiş, sonuçta Hocazâde’nin eseri büyük beğeni toplayarak yarışmayı kazanmıştır. Hocazâde’nin Tehâfütü’l-felâsife adlı eseri gerek İslâm felsefe geleneğine ve gerekse tehâfüt geleneğine yaptığı katkı açısından son derece müstesna bir yere sahiptir. Söz konusu bu eser, teorik yaklaşımı, konuları sistemli bir şekilde ele alma yöntemi ve derinlikli bakış sunan özelliği bakımından, Osmanlı dönemi İslam felsefesine tipik bir örnek teşkil etmiş ve hatırı sayılır bir ün kazanmıştır. Hocazâde, Tehâfüt’ünde aklı ve nakli birbirinin tamamlayıcısı olarak görmüştür. O, düşüncelerinin yerindeliği ile kelâm-felsefe tartışmalarının merkezinde yer almış ve tehâfüt geleneği içerisinde haklı bir konum elde ederek Osmanlı dönemi İslam felsefesinin önde gelen düşünürleri arasında yer almıştır. Hocazâde’nin eserinin orijinal adı “Kitâbû’t Tehâfüt fi el-Muhâkeme beyne’l Gazzâlî ve’l-Felâsife”dir. Eser, yirmi iki felsefi meseleden oluşmaktadır. Hocazâde bu yirmi iki mesele içerisinde bütün felsefi konular hakkındaki görüşünü açıklamış, Gazzâlî’nin de filozoflar ile çatıştığı konuları karşılaştırmalı olarak ele almıştır. Gazzâlî’nin, filozofları tekfir etmesinden sonra düşünce geleneğinde önemli hale gelen üç mesele, eserin ana konusunu oluşturmaktadır. Düşünce ve metot bakımından Osmanlı Dönemi İslâm felsefesinin önemli temsilcilerinden biri olan Hocazâde, eserinde Gazzâlî ve diğer filozofların görüşlerine yer vermiş, görüşler arasında mutabakat sağlamaya çalışmış ve en iyi tercihi yapmaya gayret etmiştir. Bu eser üzerine yazılan talikat ve haşiyeler Osmanlı düşünce geleneğinde felsefenin gelişmesine büyük bir katkıda bulunmuş dahası bir anlamda tozlanmış ya da küllenmiş tehâfüt tartışmalarının yeniden canlanmasını, harlanmasını sağlamıştır. Bu makalede literatür ve veri analizi yöntemleri kullanılmak suretiyle Osmanlı dönemi İslam felsefesinin seyrini yansıtan tehâfüt geleneği ve bu gelenek içerisinde Hocazâde’nin tehâfüt adlı eserinin yeri ve önemi ortaya konacaktır. Bu çalışmayla amaçlanan bir diğer husus ise Hocazâde’nin entelektüel kişiliği ile Osmanlı düşünce geleneğinin yapısal özellikleri arasındaki muhtemel ilişkilerdir. (shrink)

BackgroundConflict in Iraq has displaced millions of refugee youth. Warzone exposure and forced migration have unique acute and chronic impacts on youth, yet effects of exposure may not be universal across diverse refugee groups. Understanding how youth from various refugee groups are differentially affected by stress and trauma is critical to allocate resources and implement screening measures with the goal of providing early intervention.MethodTo identify the effects of warzone exposure and forced migration, a convenience sample of 48 Iraqi refugee youth (...) ages 6–17 was assessed within the first month of arrival to the United States. Youth provided self-reported severity of posttraumatic stress and anxiety symptoms; symptom severity was then compared with an existing sample of 135 Syrian refugee youth to explore whether refugee youth of different nationalities experience the same effects of warzone exposure and forced migration. These data are the baseline for a longitudinal developmental study of refugee health, which also includes parental data.ResultsSeverity of separation anxiety and negative alterations in cognition and mood were the greatest symptomatic concerns in Iraqi refugee youth. Thirty-eight percent of responding Iraqi youth showed possible indication of an anxiety disorder. Severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms was lower in Iraqi youth compared to Syrian youth. For both Iraqi and Syrian refugee youth, separation anxiety was the most significant concern, with more than 80% of both samples showing a possible indication of clinically significant separation anxiety.ConclusionThe present observational study indicated that Iraqi refugee youth experience a range of anxiety and posttraumatic stress symptoms following warzone exposure and forced migration; posttraumatic stress symptoms were less severe in Iraqi versus Syrian youth. Comparing refugee youth of different nationalities is of particular importance, as our results demonstrate that findings from one refugee population cannot easily be generalized to another. Clinical and research efforts should prioritize interventions to address separation anxiety in refugee youth, which was of concern in both samples. (shrink)