Plagiarism Policy

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem 

Please read this document in its entirety, before attempting your assignment. 

IOU’S PLAGIARISM POLICY 

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the universe and peace and blessing be upon the last messenger Muhammad and all those who follow his path with righteousness until the Last Day. 

Please read and understand this policy in details before attempting any assignments at IOU. 

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, "He who deceives us is not one of us." (Saheeh Muslim) 

Definition of Plagiarism: 

A common form of deception in studies is plagiarism. Plagiarism is sometimes misunderstood to refer to copying alone; however, plagiarism is much deeper than just copying. It includes quoting without proper references, collaboration, and stealing other people's ideas while passing them off as one’s own. Plagiarism is the “failure to acknowledge the ideas or writing of another” or “presentation of the ideas or writing of another as one’s own” and should be read to cover intentional and unintentional failure to acknowledge the ideas of others. In this context “others” means any other person including a student, academic, professional, published author or other resources such as the Internet. 

The Islamic Online University believes that failing to acknowledge the use of ideas of others constitutes an important breach of Islamic and academic values and conventions of the institution. 

IOU Stance on Plagiarism

 The Islamic Online University will not tolerate plagiarism in any form, and any student caught plagiarizing will be penalized. Depending on the severity of the plagiarism, the penalty could range from reduction of marks to rejection of the paper itself. 

With respect to the assignments, the following constitutes plagiarism: 

1) Copying someone else's assignment 

2) Collaboration and working together on an assignment 

3) Copying and Pasting entire articles of the internet 

4) Quoting someone else’s work without referencing the author 

5) Using someone else’s ideas or words without referencing them 

To avoid plagiarism, be sure to: 

• Use quotation marks around a quote and cite the source. 
• Reference all quotations and citations 
• Reword/paraphrase. Don’t write word for word what you have read. Take notes first in your own words, then write your assignment from your notes (not the text). 

For more information on how to avoid plagiarism and how to properly cite a source, visit the following website: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/plagiarism.html

You may also test your understanding of plagiarism by using this link: https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/plagiarism/tutorial/whatis1.html

Similarity Indicator

IOU reserves the right to submit all academic assignments to a plagiarism checker to produce similarity ratings for each assignment. The similarity indicator provides a rating of how similar text in the assignment is to resources available on the Internet. In line with universal academic writing practices, IOU prefers that text be paraphrased in the words of the student and not quoted directly, with the original author of the knowledge being duly cited and referenced. 

As a University-wide norm, IOU recommends that the similarity indicator does not exceed 20%. 

Result of Plagiarism: 

Assignments that contain a rating higher than 50% will be automatically rejected and validated for plagiarism with a manual check by the teachers or relevant academic. The student will be given a grade of 0 and there will be no second chances for submitting the assignment. The teachers or relevant academic will use the similarity rating in determining the final grade of the submission. Remember that we are Muslims studying Allah’s religion, and so plagiarizing in Islamic Studies is a sin and can rob your studies of reward. May Allah bless you all with success with your coursework. Ameen. IOU Admin.