The Islamic System of Moral Values: The Absent Dimension in Social Networks (Facebook as a Model)

Abstract                                   
The Egyptian society has recently witnessed radical changes in all economic, political, social and cultural fields, which affected one’s moral values within society. In addition, technology developments in communication means led to breaking the barriers of time and space among individuals, nations and cultures all over the world. The result is the existence of strange values within our society affecting our own system of moral values. While using social networks in general and Facebook in particular, youth are exposed to two different kinds of values: The traditional transmitted values related to the prevailing culture and the new values resulting from the technology development. There is a kind of conflict between both systems of values. As an inevitable consequence of emptiness, young people got what they want in social networks as a means for draining energy and spending free time. Thereby, they spend much more time using these networks. The result is that many immoral behaviors have been acquired by young people. Confronting such behaviors acquired through social networks in general and Facebook in particular requires a system of moral values derived from the Holy Quran and the Prophetic Sunnah. To achieve this, the current research utilized the integrative research approach. The descriptive method was utilized so as to identifying moral problems challenging the Egyptian society because of social networks use. The elicitation approach was also utilized in order to elicit moral values from the Holy Quran, the Prophetic Sunnah and the Companions’ diligences. These values should be acquired by the Egyptian youth for utilizing the Facebook social network optimally. Eventually, the study provided a system of moral values for confronting the immoral behaviors. The proposed system was of six major moral values (truth – responsibility – honesty – faithfulness - forgiveness – avoiding bad suspicions).