User talk:Louis P. Boog/Archive 6

Islam Q&A

I'll need to wrack my brains a bit for the context, but there was recently quite an enlightening discussion here somewhere about what this site is and isn't. Reliability-wise, I see little difference between any of the Islam Q&A, blog-style or other revivalist Islamic websites with low budgets and likely even lower oversight. Islam Q&A may be popular among a very niche demographic, but that is it, and that still says very little about the quality or accuracy of its content. And not even this is certain. How many of those 10 million views are Muslims and how many are Islamophobes just trawling the internet for odious opinions to point fingers at? I would also caution against throwing the rather dubious 'most popular Salafi website' epithet around. You also have to bear in mind that only a certain type of Muslim even bothers googling hadith (and unofficial, non-governmentally sanctioned fatwa), and the answer is not a mainstream one. Think how many Christians worldwide actually spend their days googling bible verses, and what proportion of worshippers they likely represent. On the face of it, Muhammad Al-Munajjid] is the only source of editorial control and he is a person of zero religious authority. He studied industrial management and has never been formally qualified as an expert of Islamic scholarship by a reputed institution. I'm not going to argue the toss over whether the site can still be used, heavily contextualised, as indicative of certain Salafi viewpoints, but I would say, at best, it is still a deeply flawed placeholder source pending the insertion of something more scholarly. Ditto all sites of its ilk. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:01, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_283#IslamQA

@Iskandar323: I would like to politely suggest that sometimes occupying a bubble, in say, for example, academia, and focusing on Islamophobia, may sometimes prevent a person from seeing the complete picture. Yes pious Muslim don't need the internet for the Quran, but why wouldn't pious Muslims use the internet to look up hadith? There are thousands of hadith and volume sets are expensive and not as easy to search. As for fatawa, are you seriously suggesting fatwa and fatwa sites are not of interest to pious Muslims? look at the "top countries" using Islamqa. Yes some of the 10% of American visitors to the cite and some of the 6.65% from the UK, may not be pious Muslims, but the 9.95% from Egypt, 9.16 from Saudi Arabia, 5.72% from Algeria??? Are Islamophobes really making millions of searches to find hadith and fatwa to embarrass Islam, making sites like IslamQA look more important than they are? Or are they at the pub swilling lager? As for Muhammad Al-Munajjid's lack of expertise, I put it to you that there is a long tradition of pious Muslims (such as the Islam teacher at a local mosque whose class I attended) with full time jobs in some secular field who have spent years studying Islam, formally and informally, and who spend huge chunks of their spare time in volunteer work in dawah and at the Mosque. Low budgets? IslamQA lists a budget of $10.0M - $15.0M. Are big fat academic budgets really necessary for Islamic cred?? I put it to you that will come as a surprise to most Muslims. And most jaw dropping of all, the sketchiness of "unofficial, non-governmentally sanctioned fatwa". Are pious Muslim putting their trust in "governmentally sanctioned fatwa"? Yes, some are, but a hell of a lot are not.

In conclusion, I suggest that using IslamQA with the caveat that it is a conservative Salafi site, be allowed in wikipedia. -- Sincerely Louis P. Boog (talk) 00:50, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Take it as you will. I merely presented you with a number of observations. But I would suggest that you are in the minority on this. I have been specifically thanked by two administrators and four other long-term editors in this area for removing such references. And I am surprised that you yourself are not more willing to acknowledge that ultimately, serious academic sources are obviously preferable for all of this type of material. I agree with almost none of your counterpoints. There are plenty of professors of Islam and/or history to choose from in covering such subjects. The page on IslamQA.info is itself supported by plenty of reliably published sources. Since you have coaxed me into elaborating, 10 million visits means nothing. We don't know who the visitors are, and, even if they are all Muslims, there are 1.8 billion Muslims and we are only talking visits here, not unique pageviews. That means this could be just 1 million Muslims clicking 10 times each. Statistically significant? Not particularly. More like a drop in the ocean. In any case, thankfully truth (or in this case verifiability and reliability) is not a majority vote. If it was, we would have to accept that since Facebook is where 60 per cent of Americans get their news from, Facebook is a reliable source for news. Thankfully, we don't. Page visits are not a good indicator of notability or reliability. You speak of Saudi Arabia, but on the page for Muhammad Al-Munajjid you may wish to note that the website has been banned in Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Salafism, on account of its complete lack of authority in issuing fatwas. Now yes, Islam also has a long tradition of scholarly independence. But Muhammad Al-Munajjid also has no pedigree as a scholar whatsoever, of any kind, whichever way you look at it, except as an internet pedagogue. Is there even any evidence at all that Muhammad Al-Munajjid is a reliable (as opposed to just anecdotally popular) source for Salafist opinions, let alone legal rulings? You mention the blend of formal and informal teaching in Islam, but is there any evidence that this man has any of the former? It is quite clearly noted that he has no Ijazah, and not noted that he has spent any time at any Islamic learning institution. If this were an individual in any other discipline, would you give them this level of benefit of the doubt? I could go on, and I am quite happy to go on, but I'll leave it there for now! Iskandar323 (talk) 04:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: Apparently I am very much outnumbered on this issue and am wasting time. But before I go, a few points:

Why not use some of the "plenty of professors of Islam and/or history to choose from in covering such subjects", instead of IslamQA? Well try finding something in secular academia on the hadith stating that "Out of every one thousand people entering into the afterlife, nine hundred and ninety-nine of them will end up in the fire". or the "7 Deadly Sins that doom a person to Hell". You may say, "well if academics haven't written about it there are no reliable sources, so Wikipedia can't cover it". This would exclude a great many issues and topics pious Muslims are very interested in and to me is a very unsatisfactory solution.

If official, governmental sanction of fatwa and scholarship were crucial criteria for mainstream Muslims, wouldn't that be reflected in internet traffic? Yet when you compare the SimilarWeb global rankings of traffic of islamqa.info,compared with what appears to be the main fatwa site (nine different languages available from the looks of it) for the largest Arab country, (Egypt), you find:

islamqa.info of #7880

dar-alifta #193,960

A rather large difference. Surely it can't be explained by masses of Islamophobes searching islamqa.info.

But so what if Muslim use of IslamQA dwarfs official sources of knowledge, "truth (or in this case verifiability and reliability) is not a majority vote", right? The problem is religions are not a vaccine, not a tally of votes for a political candidate. they are what their believers believe. If internet traffic is a rough guide to credibility with practicing, pious believers, we should pay attention to it. -- Sincerely, Louis P. Boog (talk) 16:34, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I was more than a little jetlagged and crotchety when last responded, so apologies for that, but on one level, yes, if a hadith hasn't been discussed extensively, it quite possibly isn't deemed that significant to anyone. In the example above, that particular hadith is sourced to Bukhari, great, and there is also an Al-Ghazali reference - I imagine it Al-Ghazali mentioned it, he also commented on it, so I'm a little surprised that there is no extract from Al-Ghazali right there, because THAT would be an authoritative interpretation. I'm not sure this is a good example for the utility of Islam QA though, as it basically just adds that it could be a metaphor, so not hugely insightful, and I'm not even sure if it counts as a secondary source, as it admits to simply repeating the answers of Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari, so why not just cite that primary source directly? No contrasting sources are provided, and no self-evident effort is made to further analyze the source, so it is pure reiteration and mirroring of a primary source. Back to the numbers again, it is apples and oranges to compare a single government fatwa site with a website that markets itself to an international readership - most Muslim countries will have a fatwa website, just as government health authorities have health information websites. Country websites will also likely reflect the prevalent school, be it Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i or Hanbali. Government sites aren't normally sexy or particularly well pitched towards the mass market, and certainly aren't streamlined to give an audience of Islamic revivalists the world over what they want. Why is Facebook more popular for news than actual reliable news website? Ease of access, and the platform gives you what it has realised you want to hear. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323:Forgot to reply ...

you may wish to note that the website has been banned in Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Salafism, on account of its complete lack of authority in issuing fatwas.

Please check Islam_in_Saudi_Arabia#New_MbS_era. A LOT of changes since the heyday of Wahhabism in KSA. "lack of authority" in the eyes of Wahhabi scholars does not appear to be the cause of IslamQA's banning.

if a hadith hasn't been discussed extensively, it quite possibly isn't deemed that significant to anyone

Anyone? You mean any academics right? Aren't we interested in significant to Muslims????

it is apples and oranges to compare a single government fatwa site with a website that markets itself to an international readership

Well dar-alifta has gone to the trouble of offering nine different languages, so presumably they are attempting to appeal to others than Egyptians. And exactly what "marketing" has IslamQA done? "sexy" it ain't!

I'm not even sure if it counts as a secondary source, as it admits to simply repeating the answers of Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari, so why not just cite that primary source directly

Is there any translation of Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari available on the internet? I couldn't find one. So isn't IslamQA's providing useful information from Fath al-Bari, even if they could have done a better job of citing it? Which brings me to another question, did you ever remember where the "enlightening discussion here somewhere about what this site is and isn't" can be found? Have you and or other editors who want to ban use of IslamQA found errors in IslamQA's quotations and citations? or is it their judgements (on women, apostasy, witchcraft, etc.) that were the problem?

Islam QA was banned in 2010, long before the MbS era, which ostensibly began in 2014, so without evidence, I'm not going to casually assume any causality there. I mean any reliable sources, be they journalistic, academic or other published works by Muslim or non-Muslim authors. Just translating your website is not outreach if no one reads it. And yes, Islam QA is more gentrified that your average polemic Islam website or Middle Eastern government website. The main problem with Islam QA is that it fails basic qualifiers or reliability for an online resource, in that it provides no statements about its editorial process, no evidence of editorial control, often no means of determining its accuracy (as with its unverifiable referencing of primary sources), and the one guarantee of some sort of process is Muhammad Al-Munajjid, who is a shockingly unqualified individual to produce commentary on Islamic theology. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:11, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Louis P. Boog: You're in luck. Brain wrack successful. There was an ambling discussion on the reliability noticeboard. This is where I became acquainted with the source and its failings, and I have to say, having subsequently scrutinized the matter further, I have only found more reasons to push for extreme caution with it. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:31, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: (Having read the discussion you so helpfully provided, I have to make at least one more reply.)

You're absolutely right. Islam QA was banned in 2010, even before Salman bin Abdulaziz, never mind MbS, became crown prince. ... but there's a little problem. why was the site banned? "on account of its complete lack of authority in issuing fatwas", because of Salih al-Munajjid's poor scholarly pedigree? lack of credentials required to be a member of the Saudi religious establishment? Nope. According to Christopher Boucek (who was cited in the wikipedia article on IslamQA), the ban was "the latest example of how the state is working to assert its primacy over the country’s religious establishment", (italics added). The text of King Abdullah's the decree to Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh read in part: “As part of our religious and national duty we want you to ensure that fatwas are only issued by members of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars and other permitted people. [...] only clerics associated with the Senior Council of Ulema (clerics) are now authorized to issue fatwas" and "members are all appointed by the king [...] The recent fatwa restrictions are only the latest assertion of state authority. Within the past two years alone, the government replaced nearly every senior religious and judicial leader in the February 2009 reshuffle, opened the co-educational King Abdullah University for Science and Technology, and for the first time in Saudi history dismissed a member of the Senior Council of Ulema for publicly disagreeing with stated government policy." In short it sounds like the issue with IslamQA (and every other fatwa site except those put out by Senior Council of Ulema) is that it's not controlled by the government, not its scholarship or credibility with practicing Muslims.

Must a secondary sources provide "significant contextualisation, self-reflection, contrasting of alternative viewpoints or other forms of analytical standpoints"? Seems like a high bar. Couldn't just providing relevant information be good enough?

it fails basic qualifiers or reliability for an online resource, in that it provides no statements about its editorial process, ...no evidence of editorial control ...

what's wrong with General Supervisor: Shaykh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid

no means of determining its accuracy (as with its unverifiable referencing of primary sources)

wouldn't the means be finding inaccuracy in something it quoted?

Muhammad Al-Munajjid, .. is a shockingly unqualified individual ...

Have to agree with User:BilledMammal that WP:USEBYOTHERS is relevant here.

Sincerely, Louis P. Boog (talk) 18:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I think you're getting a little hung up on the Saudi Arabia ban, which was simply a minor point among many. I was just correcting you on the chronology of events. The main issue is the lack of academic credentials here for someone who is making unqualified religious opinions as if they are a scholarly source, when they are not. 'Credibility with practicing Muslims' cannot be established by pageviews. At best, we can say Munajid is a vaguely indicative source for certain veins of Salafi thought. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

(References)