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Due to a pervasive narrative bias, I felt it was necessary to do a considerable re-write of the article. It had previously been written in a manner which heavily favoured the Shia viewpoint, giving very little weight to alternate views. In addition to this, I've had to make other major changes. I don't know if anyone will view my edit as controversial, so just in case, I wanted to give a breakdown of my more prominent modifications.
My edit has resulted in the removal of a fair bit of content. Much of this was because I needed to cut down several of the subsections, which had previously been composed of complete copy-and-pastes of other articles (e.g. Saqifah, Hadith of Warning). Aside from the fact that this basically negated the need for these articles, the copy-and-pastes had also resulted in the inclusion of much irrelevant information. I tried to correct this by writing an abridged version of the content from the respective articles, including only what was directly related to the succession to Muhammad.
I have also removed sections which only had tenuous links to the article subject. One was the "Expedition of Usama bin Zayd", which spent a considerable amount of time discussing Abu Bakr and Umar's opposition to joining a military expedition ordered by Muhammad. This sections inclusion in the article was only justified by the final sentence, which stated that Muhammad's desire for them to leave on this expedition was "proof" that he did not want them involved in his succession. This seems like conjecture at best, especially considering that the source used was a religious Shia text which did not seem especially reliable.
Another was the "Attack on Muhammad's family", which does not seem to have any impact on the succession, and certainly not one which justifies a four-paragraph discussion. I included a brief mention of the event as well as a link to the main article. I don't think anything beyond this is really necessary. I also removed "Ali in the Quran" since again, nothing here seemed particularly relevant to the succession. The "Hadith" subsection under "Shia view" was similarly removed since all the relevant hadiths are extensively discussed in my revision of the article. Finally, I removed the "Western academic views" section. My reason for this is that I don't really see the purpose of its inclusion. Ignoring the fact that the section wrongly suggested that current academics have a single inflexible opinion that only the Shia viewpoint is correct, the addition of an unbiased version wouldn't really add any substance to the page, as it would essentially just rehash arguments which had already been stated. Also, given that I have already included the views of several "Western" academics throughout the article, the section would be pretty redundant.
I added an overview of the succession in subsequent decades and centuries. I felt this was needed as much of the Shia-Sunni split in regards to the succession only occurred long after Muhammad's death. The fact that the previous lead discussed this without any mention in the main article made this discussion seem especially necessary. I also added the views of the Ibadi and Zaydi sects, as well as a discussion of a number of other hadiths.
My edit included content partially copied from
Saqifah,
Hadith of Warning,
Hadith of the pen and paper,
Caliphate,
Zaidiyyah and
Ibadi.
Alivardi (
talk) 13:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Cerebellum ( talk · contribs) 13:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Albertatiran You have added following sources, none of which qualifies as an RS.
You should read the pages a I linked in the edit summary. Please revert your additions, and explain how your sources are RS. -- AhmadLX- (Wikiposta) 14:49, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be anything on these pages (WP:RS and WP:Primary) that prohibits reliable primary sources. With a couple of exceptions, the sources I used are primary Sunni sources that have been published and are accessible to all. For more information, please see https://shamela.ws/ These seem to pass the reliability criteria.
I also didn't "analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material" in any of these sources. Instead, I referred to the page number where the exact claim is made in each source. (I can perhaps improve this part by adding direct quotes from the sources...) So it's not clear to me if you have an issue with using primary sources or the way I'm using them (or both) and what exactly your objection is.
I'd be grateful if you could clarify yourself. Thanks. Albertatiran ( talk) 15:10, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.Now tell me, which of the sources you have added are published by reputable publishers? A couple examples of primary sources published by reputable publishers would be Tabari's History published by SUNY Press, and Baladhuri's Futuh published by Columbia University Press. Also, when secondary sources exist, which they do in this case, primary sources published by reputable sources are also to avoided. The website you linked above is User Generated Content. For it see WP:RS. AhmadLX- (Wikiposta) 15:15, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm going to work on this article over the course of the next few weeks to improve the presentation of Shia views. I'll discuss any major changes in this section. Albertatiran ( talk) 06:56, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
Among other things, I also plan to replace all instances of Shiite with Shia. The latter can be used as a noun or an adjective according to Google Dictionary. Albertatiran ( talk)
When discussing the hadith of position, the sentence "...having died during Moses' lifetime after being punished by God for the latter's mistakes" from [Miskinzoda, 2015] contradicts the Islamic belief that prophets, including Moses, were infallible (even though different sects of Islam have slightly different interpretations of infallibility). [1] [2] This view about Moses likely has Jewish roots. I have a difficult time finding a source for this view in the Islamic literature and Miskinzoda does not provide a reference for her claim. I'd like to remove this sentence. Albertatiran ( talk) 14:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
In the subsection Supporting Abu Bakr's Succession, the sentence "Among Sunni sources, Abu Bakr's succession is justified by narrations of Muhammad displaying the regard with which he held the former" is not cited. Every subsection here corresponds to a single incident and it might be better to change the title of the subsection and focus on Abu Bakr's congregational prayer. Unlike the other subsections, the title of this subsection is clearly biased. Albertatiran ( talk) 09:52, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
There are a few primary sources in the text that I'd hope to replace or remove, e.g., Musnid Ahmed, Tabari. Also to be removed: Restatement of the history of Islam and Muslims. Another to-do item is to move all sources to a separate bibliography section at the end of the article. Lastly, I'd like to copy-edit the text to improve its neutrality and readability, e.g., by removing instances of "indeed" and adding "according to" and such. Albertatiran ( talk) 11:39, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
References
Collected the bibliography at the end of the article, added perhaps a dozen new reliable sources, copy-edited the article to improve neutrality and clarity. These edits are too many to summarize here but, I think, it's very clear that the revised article is better-sourced and less biased. I don't think any of the edits are controversial but, if there are any concerns, please discuss them here first. Albertatiran ( talk) 19:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
Succession to Muhammad has been listed as one of the
History good articles under the
good article criteria. If you can improve it further,
please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can
reassess it. Review: September 5, 2019. ( Reviewed version). |
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Succession to Muhammad article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 365 days |
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by ClueBot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
Due to a pervasive narrative bias, I felt it was necessary to do a considerable re-write of the article. It had previously been written in a manner which heavily favoured the Shia viewpoint, giving very little weight to alternate views. In addition to this, I've had to make other major changes. I don't know if anyone will view my edit as controversial, so just in case, I wanted to give a breakdown of my more prominent modifications.
My edit has resulted in the removal of a fair bit of content. Much of this was because I needed to cut down several of the subsections, which had previously been composed of complete copy-and-pastes of other articles (e.g. Saqifah, Hadith of Warning). Aside from the fact that this basically negated the need for these articles, the copy-and-pastes had also resulted in the inclusion of much irrelevant information. I tried to correct this by writing an abridged version of the content from the respective articles, including only what was directly related to the succession to Muhammad.
I have also removed sections which only had tenuous links to the article subject. One was the "Expedition of Usama bin Zayd", which spent a considerable amount of time discussing Abu Bakr and Umar's opposition to joining a military expedition ordered by Muhammad. This sections inclusion in the article was only justified by the final sentence, which stated that Muhammad's desire for them to leave on this expedition was "proof" that he did not want them involved in his succession. This seems like conjecture at best, especially considering that the source used was a religious Shia text which did not seem especially reliable.
Another was the "Attack on Muhammad's family", which does not seem to have any impact on the succession, and certainly not one which justifies a four-paragraph discussion. I included a brief mention of the event as well as a link to the main article. I don't think anything beyond this is really necessary. I also removed "Ali in the Quran" since again, nothing here seemed particularly relevant to the succession. The "Hadith" subsection under "Shia view" was similarly removed since all the relevant hadiths are extensively discussed in my revision of the article. Finally, I removed the "Western academic views" section. My reason for this is that I don't really see the purpose of its inclusion. Ignoring the fact that the section wrongly suggested that current academics have a single inflexible opinion that only the Shia viewpoint is correct, the addition of an unbiased version wouldn't really add any substance to the page, as it would essentially just rehash arguments which had already been stated. Also, given that I have already included the views of several "Western" academics throughout the article, the section would be pretty redundant.
I added an overview of the succession in subsequent decades and centuries. I felt this was needed as much of the Shia-Sunni split in regards to the succession only occurred long after Muhammad's death. The fact that the previous lead discussed this without any mention in the main article made this discussion seem especially necessary. I also added the views of the Ibadi and Zaydi sects, as well as a discussion of a number of other hadiths.
My edit included content partially copied from
Saqifah,
Hadith of Warning,
Hadith of the pen and paper,
Caliphate,
Zaidiyyah and
Ibadi.
Alivardi (
talk) 13:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Cerebellum ( talk · contribs) 13:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Albertatiran You have added following sources, none of which qualifies as an RS.
You should read the pages a I linked in the edit summary. Please revert your additions, and explain how your sources are RS. -- AhmadLX- (Wikiposta) 14:49, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be anything on these pages (WP:RS and WP:Primary) that prohibits reliable primary sources. With a couple of exceptions, the sources I used are primary Sunni sources that have been published and are accessible to all. For more information, please see https://shamela.ws/ These seem to pass the reliability criteria.
I also didn't "analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material" in any of these sources. Instead, I referred to the page number where the exact claim is made in each source. (I can perhaps improve this part by adding direct quotes from the sources...) So it's not clear to me if you have an issue with using primary sources or the way I'm using them (or both) and what exactly your objection is.
I'd be grateful if you could clarify yourself. Thanks. Albertatiran ( talk) 15:10, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.Now tell me, which of the sources you have added are published by reputable publishers? A couple examples of primary sources published by reputable publishers would be Tabari's History published by SUNY Press, and Baladhuri's Futuh published by Columbia University Press. Also, when secondary sources exist, which they do in this case, primary sources published by reputable sources are also to avoided. The website you linked above is User Generated Content. For it see WP:RS. AhmadLX- (Wikiposta) 15:15, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm going to work on this article over the course of the next few weeks to improve the presentation of Shia views. I'll discuss any major changes in this section. Albertatiran ( talk) 06:56, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
Among other things, I also plan to replace all instances of Shiite with Shia. The latter can be used as a noun or an adjective according to Google Dictionary. Albertatiran ( talk)
When discussing the hadith of position, the sentence "...having died during Moses' lifetime after being punished by God for the latter's mistakes" from [Miskinzoda, 2015] contradicts the Islamic belief that prophets, including Moses, were infallible (even though different sects of Islam have slightly different interpretations of infallibility). [1] [2] This view about Moses likely has Jewish roots. I have a difficult time finding a source for this view in the Islamic literature and Miskinzoda does not provide a reference for her claim. I'd like to remove this sentence. Albertatiran ( talk) 14:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
In the subsection Supporting Abu Bakr's Succession, the sentence "Among Sunni sources, Abu Bakr's succession is justified by narrations of Muhammad displaying the regard with which he held the former" is not cited. Every subsection here corresponds to a single incident and it might be better to change the title of the subsection and focus on Abu Bakr's congregational prayer. Unlike the other subsections, the title of this subsection is clearly biased. Albertatiran ( talk) 09:52, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
There are a few primary sources in the text that I'd hope to replace or remove, e.g., Musnid Ahmed, Tabari. Also to be removed: Restatement of the history of Islam and Muslims. Another to-do item is to move all sources to a separate bibliography section at the end of the article. Lastly, I'd like to copy-edit the text to improve its neutrality and readability, e.g., by removing instances of "indeed" and adding "according to" and such. Albertatiran ( talk) 11:39, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
References
Collected the bibliography at the end of the article, added perhaps a dozen new reliable sources, copy-edited the article to improve neutrality and clarity. These edits are too many to summarize here but, I think, it's very clear that the revised article is better-sourced and less biased. I don't think any of the edits are controversial but, if there are any concerns, please discuss them here first. Albertatiran ( talk) 19:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)