Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:54, 9 April 2008

This guideline is a part of the English Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcut WP:MOSISLAM

The purpose of this supplementary manual is to create guidelines for editing Islam-related articles to conform to a neutral encyclopedic style as well as to make things easy to read by following a consistent format. The following rules do not claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Misplaced Pages will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. This manual is open to all proposals, discussion, and editing.

There is considerable disagreement between the editors of Islam related articles about which sources are reliable. The important thing to remember is that all sources and articles must conform to Wiki policies such as WP:NOR, WP:V and WP:NPOV.

General form of articles

Islam-related articles should generally satisfy the following, as should all Misplaced Pages articles:

• The first sentence of each article should have the article title in bold and then define the article title.

• Each article should proceed with general remarks near the start and specific ones later. In lengthy articles, separate pages for detailed discussions of a topic should be used with a main article link (or links).

• At the end of each article, there should be the sections 'See also' (for closely related articles), 'References' (for reliability of article content) and 'External links' (for links to relevant web pages) in that order.

• Each article should be in at least one Islam category.

Grammatical standardization

Arabic transliteration

See Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (Arabic) for details on how to transliterate Arabic words into English, and how to use them on Misplaced Pages. As a rule, diacritics over and under the letters should not be used in article titles or text (only in the etymology section). If a non-standard form of transliteration is to be used, it must be the primary transliteration, based on references or self-identification. For example Mecca rather than Makkah, mosque rather than masjid etc. Otherwise, a standard transliteration should be used. The characters representing the ayin (ع) and the hamza (ء) are not omitted in the standard form, represented by the grave accent (`) and the apostrophe ('), respectively.

Words of Arabic origin should be written out in lower case, except at the beginning of a sentence, and italicized, except when the word has passed into common English vocabulary (see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Foreign terms). For example, fiqh, kharaj, and wudu should usually be italicized; jihad and hadith should not. Proper names are exempt from these rules: they should always be capitalized but never italicized.

Articles should include the original Arabic on the first line. If you do not know the Arabic, place {{Arabic}} at the top of the talk page to mark the article for attention from someone who does.

Translation

Arabic terms should be translated into standard English wherever possible without compromising the meaning of the text. For example, "Allah" should be translated as "God", but a literal translation of "Deen" as "path" would obscure the special meaning of this term as used in Islam (although "way of life" might be acceptable).

Templates

Various templates useful when editing Islam-related articles can be found at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (Islam-related articles)/templates; for other templates please see Misplaced Pages:Template messages.

Islamic honorifics

In keeping with the neutral nature of Misplaced Pages, Islamic honorifics should generally be omitted from articles, except where they are part of quotations.

Allah

Allah has many honorifics, the most common one being

• SWT or the fuller Subhanahu wa ta'ala, meaning "praised and exalted is He (Allah)" — recommended action is to remove.

Allah should be replaced with its translation of "God", unless used as part of an English-language quote. Also, the first occurrence of "God" in the article should be something to the effect of the following: ].

Muhammad

There are several honorifics for Muhammad which should generally not be used in articles. The page Islam and veneration for Muhammad discusses these honorifics in more detail, the most common ones being:

• The Prophet or (The) Holy Prophet (including with a lowercase 'h') in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad"; or just Prophet preceding "Muhammad" — recommended action is to simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article in which case render it as "the Islamic prophet, Muhammad". However in two cases The Prophet is more preferable.
  • First, When the issue relates to his prophecy directly. For example, Muslims follow The Prophet's Sunnah.
  • Second, to show Muslim's viewpoint. For example, Muslims believe the present wording of the Qur’anic text corresponds exactly to that revealed to The Prophet himself.
• PBUH , or the fuller "peace be upon him", after Muhammad or other Islamic prophets — recommended action is to remove.
• SAW (or saws), a variant of PBUH, sometimes used after "Muhammad" — recommended action is to remove.

Companions

Capitalization of Companions of Muhammad (Sahaba) when referring to those who knew Muhammad — corrective action is to write in lower case in keeping with Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Capitals.

There are also other honorifics for companions all of which can be abbreviated to:

• RA or the fuller versions Radiya-allahu ta'ala (an-hu/an-ha/an-hum/an-huma) - for a sahabi, a sahabiyyah, more than two sahaba and exactly two sahaba, respectively - recommended action is to remove.

Angels and Prophets

An angel or a prophet has the honorific:

• AS or the fuller Alai-hi-as-salam, for example, Jesus (AS) - recommended action is to remove.

Qur'an

• Holy Qur'an (or Holy Koran, Holy Quran, etc.) — recommended action is to NPOV to "Qur'an". Reason: Calling a book "Holy" is making a value judgement that is inappropriate to Misplaced Pages.

Terrorism

The use of the word terrorism is contentious; see Misplaced Pages:Words to avoid#Terrorist, terrorism. Its use should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Categorisation

Due to the huge number of Islam articles present, as well as to address the problem of 'dumping' new Islam articles in Category:Islam (and similarly for other subcategories), appropriate placement of articles in categories is required. This has been done to some extent, but quite often new editors are unaware of more technical categories (e.g. Category:Tafsir). Of course an article may be (and usually is) placed in more than one category, but to avoid cluttering categories the number of categories any given article is placed into should be kept to a minimum.

Islam category

With respect to the 'dumping' problem mentioned above, it is requested that editors check Category:Islam frequently, as this is the place where many new Islam articles are placed, but where the articles could (sometimes clearly) be better placed in at least one subcategory of Category:Islam. Currently, there are a handful of articles on the Islam category page.

Criteria that should be satisfied for inclusion of an Islam-related article in the Islam category are:

• Articles that are clearly representative of a major and well known aspect of Islam, such as Allah, Qur'an and Muhammad.

• Articles that don't satisfy the above criterion and cannot at present be satisfactorily placed in a subcategory of the Islam category (sort of like a 'holding area').

Divisions of Islam

There is a Category:Islamic sects for placing articles on various sects in Islam.

Sunni, Shi'a and Sufi Islam

These 3 sects have their own categories, in fact they are subcategories of Category:Islamic sects, which is a subcategory of Category:Islam.

People

There are many Islam articles that are about Muslims. These articles should be placed in the appropriate category such as Category:Muslims or a subcategory thereof such as, Category:Caliphs, Category:Imams, Category:Fictional Muslims and Category:Muslims by nationality. Only the most notable or famous Muslims should be placed in Category:Muslims.

Stubs

There is currently one stub category with 6 subcategories:

• Category:Islam stubs - type {{Islam-stub}} near the end of an article to add it to this category.
  • Category:Islamic biography stubs - type {{Islam-bio-stub}} near the end of an article to add it to this subcategory.
  • Category:Islamic studies book stubs -
  • Category:Mosque stubs -
  • Category:Islamic organization stubs
  • Category:Quran stubs
  • Category:Islam by country stubs

Hadith

Articles on hadith should make clear the reliability of the hadith - if they don't then consider adding {{Hadith authenticity}}. The four general types of hadith reliability are:

• Sahih (authentic) - further subdivided into:
  • Ahaad (transmitted by one narrator).
  • Mutawatir (agreed upon).

• Hasan (fair/good).

• Da'if (weak).

• Maudu' (fabricated).

References

As with any good encyclopedia, reliable sources should be given in each article. References to sources are of two types: those within the main text of an article (for example, a Qur'anic quote) and those at the end of an article. To maintain some type of standard in citing reliable sources, the following are suggestions towards this end.

Articles lacking references

Articles which have no references at the end of an article should have the {{references}} tag at the top of the article.

Even with references at the end, certain statements in the main text of the article may still be unsubstantiated, in which case the {{cn}} tag should be placed immediately after the claim.

References within main text

Apart from the Harvard referencing convention of writing the author's name and year of publication of source in brackets after the end of a sentence or paragraph, more specific citations for WikiProject Islam include the following:

Quran translations

There is no general consensus on which translation is to be used for Islam articles at Misplaced Pages. However, in any given article, any translation(s) from the Qur'an should quote the same translation source (e.g. Yusuf Ali) in that article (but not necessarily this same source in another article), unless comparing different translations or giving evidence for the meaning of a certain verse.

It is recommended that the template {{cite quran}} be used to quote verses from the Qur'an which will provide an inline-superscripted link to the USC-MSA online translations of Yusuf Ali, Pickthall & Shakir. Other translators can also be referenced using the template.

Qur'an and Hadith

The Qur'an and the Hadith are considered to be primary sources, as defined in WP:NOR. Therefore they should not be quoted to make an argument or imply a particular interpretation unless one can also cite a reliable secondary source that supports that usage. Editors can not use primary sources to make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims. But it's good idea to add Qur'an and Hadith to clarify the issue.

References at end of article

References at the end include books, journals and many other types of sources. The citation templates for these are suggested for use.

Media

Images

Video

Audio

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Manual of style
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Islam
• Islam related articles