Talk:Succession to Muhammad/Archive 2

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Refimprove template

@HCPUNXKID: I'm not sure if you're unfamiliar with the policies or if you think the cited source says something else than what it actually does. If you follow the link in the ref, you'll see that the source clearly supports the statement. This satisfies WP:V, so the Refimprove template is inappropriate here. Based on your edit summary it seems that you have some concern about WP:NPOV. If you do, you're welcome to find a WP:RS that gives an alternative account of the views of Western historians, if such a source actually exists. Then we can change the article to reflect the alternative perspectives. Eperoton (talk) 04:18, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Biased point of view

The POV template has been added in response to the obvious bias of the text on the Shi'a side, take for instance the part that the article invalidates the western academic consensus in favor of Wilferd Madelung who is paid by Institute for Ismaili Studies funded by Karim Aga Khan NetBSDuser (talk) 15:42, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

In my opinion, it may be beneficial to remove the "Western academic views" section altogether, as a historical account is provided in the "Historical viewpoint" section. Are there any other sections that you think are biased? If not, then the NPOV tag could be moved down to the "Western academic views" section (unless we decide to delete that section, which should hopefully remove any POV concerns). Snowsky Mountain (talk) 13:44, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Best approach is to always use RS+NPOV+DUE Weight. And cherrey picking is not meant by RS. A thorough coverage of literature is expected. Historical Viewpints should be based on non-partisan reliable sources. That's is the meaning of RS. If modern academic historians' views are removed, then what remains will be bunch of religiously motivated, non-critical works. They are no RS. In brief, Historical Views section should contains modern historical views, based on published works of most academics who have published their work on this topic, keeping in mind that minority views be represented as such.AhmadLX (talk) 22:23, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Read section 4.2 and you'll see an obvious disrespect of neutrality. Lots of other parts of the article violate neutrality and need to be re-written. 99.19.70.223 (talk) 03:54, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Section 4.2 is in the "Sunni view" section, so it's supposed to describe the Sunni view rather than be neutral. Snowsky Mountain (talk) 16:42, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Lead paragraph

The lead paragraph on this article was recently changed to the following:

The succession to Muhammad is the central issue that split the Muslim community into several divisions in the first century of Muslim history, thus forming the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam. Shia Islam holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor.^[1] After the death of Muhammad, effective political leadership of the community transferred to Abu Bakr on the basis of oaths of personal allegiance given to him by a number of community leaders. Sunni Islam holds Abu Bakr to be the first rightful leader of the community after the Prophet.

However, this has a number of problems:

It goes into more detail than is permitted by MOS:LEADPARAGRAPH.
It gives reasons for why Sunnis consider Abu Bakr to be Muhammad's successor without giving the same amount of detail to the Shia POV.
"A number of community leaders" implies that Umar and Abu Ubaydah al-Jarrah were "community leaders", which they were not at the time they pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr.

Therefore, I am changing it to the following:

The succession to Muhammad is the central issue that split the Muslim community into several divisions in the first century of Muslim history, thus forming the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam. Shia Islam holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor at Ghadir Khumm.^[2] Sunni Islam, by contrast, holds Abu Bakr to be the first leader of the community after the Prophet on the basis of the decision at Saqifah.

^ Olawuyi, Toyib (2014). On the Khilafah of Ali over Abu Bakr. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-4928-5884-3. Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ Olawuyi, Toyib (2014). On the Khilafah of Ali over Abu Bakr. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-4928-5884-3. Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

Snowsky Mountain (talk) 19:54, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Succession to Muhammad/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 19:09, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Just a heads up, I posted a notice at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Islam#Requesting_outside_input_on_succession_to_Muhammad to request additional feedback on whether this article is neutral or not. --Cerebellum (talk) 15:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
Prose looks good, follows MoS WP:MOSISLAM close enough.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
See below, just a couple reference issues.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
In my opinion, does not comply with WP:NPOV.
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
See below, I'd like another image.
Overall:
Pass/Fail:
I'm gonna place this article on hold until the issues below are resolved. I'm worried that the article tilts too much to the Shia side. I don't know too much about this topic, but reading it I get the overwhelming impression that Ali should have been Muhammad's successor, and that Western scholars pretty much agree with that. Maybe that's the case, but if not please try to better represent the Sunni view. I know I'm being vague, the comments below have my specific concerns. See User talk:Snowsky Mountain. The author requested to withdraw the nomination, unfortunately by the time I saw the request I had already conducted the review. I am therefore closing the review. --Cerebellum (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Comments

Lead: The last sentence says there are "many other opinions" about the succession, but unless I'm missing something the article only covers the Shia and Sunni views. Please either remove that sentence or add the other views.
Images: I'd like to see at least one more image, there's plenty of space for it before the Saqifah one. Can you think of anything that would be appropriate?
Historiography: The sentence about Leone Caetani falls under GA criterion #2.b (published opinion), so it needs a citation.
Feast of Dhul Asheera: Consider removing the Burton quote, I'm not sure what it adds besides a rhetorical emphasis on Ali's importance.
Expedition of Usama bin Zayd: I would remove the clause beginning with despite Muhammad's teachings, it strikes me as unnecessary and almost religious in tone, like Wikipedia is taking Muhammad's side. It's also weakly referenced (no page numbers).
Saqifah: The phrase violent and possibly bloody recurs here in two successive sentences, consider revising.
Position of Ali: I think we should qualify the claim that Ali was born in the Kaaba, as far as I can tell academic sources tend to say something like "Many sources record" that he was born there ([1]).
Ali in the Quran: This verse tells Muhammad to announce Ali as his successor at the event of Ghadir Khumm - need a source for this controversial claim.
Length: The "Shia view" section is about 1200 words long. The "Sunni view" section has about 700 words. Why such a disparity?
Sunni view: The statement believe Muhammad did not make 120,000 people wait in the desert for three days only to tell them to support Ali seems a little tendentious to me and I couldn't find it in the cited source (#111), please either remove it or provide another source.
Sunni view: This section doesn't really explain why Sunnis believe Abu Bakr was the rightful caliph. What sort of arguments do they use? Are there any hadiths or Quranic verses they cite?
Attitude towards Ali: This strikes me as biased; what about the Umayyad tradition of cursing Ali? I don't have any sources to back me up, but I find it hard to believe that no Sunnis have anything bad to say about Ali.
Western academic views: Every scholar mentioned here seems to support the Shia view. Is that really representative of all scholars? Seems tendentious.
Citations: There are a few citation errors, please take a look at them. Reference #99 also has a "full citation needed" tag. --Cerebellum (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

[1] Olawuyi, Toyib (2014). On the Khilafah of Ali over Abu Bakr. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-4928-5884-3. Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[2] Olawuyi, Toyib (2014). On the Khilafah of Ali over Abu Bakr. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-4928-5884-3. Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

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