WikiIslam: Difference between revisions

Mission Statement

WikiIslam aims to provide accurate and accessible information from traditional and critical perspectives on the beliefs, practices, and development of Islam.

About

WikiIslam strives to be the most comprehensive and accurate source of information on Islam freely and accessibly available online, drawing from both Islam's primary sources (the Qur'an, hadith and Islamic scholars) as well as from the historical-critical analysis of these primary sources by modern historians. Currently, WikiIslam hosts 977 articles.

As a non-political and non-religious wiki, the site remains neutral towards religions, world views, and issues of a political nature and likewise stays away from extremist, sensationalist or emotional commentary.

WikiIslam is an international site with contributors and readers from all over the world, and the site's policies and content reflect this.

The articles on WikiIslam are produced by an open community of editors from various political, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. The only thing contributors are required to have in common is a commitment to providing unbiased and objective information on Islam. If you think you fit this description and would like to contribute, contact us, and you will readily be provided with a login.

Scope and content

WikiIslam is a non-partisan website focused exclusively on Islamic beliefs and practices. All content is therefore focused purely on Islam and how it is practiced, not on its promotion, condemnation, or topics that are sociopolitical in nature or are with regard to other faith traditions.

All content on WikiIslam is required to reference either primary, historical sources (such as the earliest qur'anic codices, hadiths, siras, and tafsirs) or scholarly secondary sources published by reliable academic journals and presses (e.g. Fred Donner's Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam, published by Harvard University Press). While the claims of latter-day Islamic scholars (e.g. Ibn Kathir or al-Suyuti) provide useful reference for the continuously developing positions of the various Islamic orthodoxies, they do not suffice as historical evidence for the claims they present.

WikiIslam requires written content to be at once accessibly and professional. Articles are required to be clear and detailed without assuming anything other than most basic background knowledge on the part of the audience. Skewed perspectives and modes of writing of any sort, be they provincial, parochial, or patriarchal, have no place on WikiIslam.

Any site content that falls beyond the bounds set by WikiIslam is removed or renovated by editors upon being brought to their attention.

Policies and Guidelines

Over the course of many years, WikiIslam has developed a comprehensive and ever evolving set collection of policies and guidelines to help administer, guide, and set expectations for the work of its editors. These policies and guidelines define everything from the specific sort of content considered appropriate to the wiki (its scope), writing style, citation format and standards, article structure, source-editing practices (Wikitext), guidelines for talk pages, pending changes protection practices, good faith practices, and the wiki's legal disclaimers.

WikiIslam's admins enforce the above policies, and editors and visitors are encouraged to either report deviations from these standards to those better situated to correct them or to correct the error or violation themselves (by requesting an account if needed).

History

As of late 2018, Ex-Muslims of North America initiated an overhaul of WikiIslam, with the stated goal of setting a high criteria of objectivity, neutrality, and professionalism. The mission statement and new policy and writing guidelines were added, while many articles on the site were removed, including satirical and polemical content, ex-Muslim testimonies, as well as op-eds and personal essays. Article templates, hubs, the main website categorization system, and the front page were also heavily modified.

WikiIslam was created on October 27, 2005 by various online activists led by the user Axius and was hosted on server space provided by Faith Freedom International. Starting in August 2008, the site separated from FFI, hosted its own servers, and began operating as an independent site run by its contributors. In 2015, following excessive amounts of vandalism, the site came under the management of the Ex-Muslims of North America.

Audience

On average, it currently receives over 250,000 visitors a month generating about 500,000 page views. As of September 2014, Alexa.com places it within the top 70,000 most visited websites.^[1]

WikiIslam's audience is not "Eurocentric". A large percentage of its readers are from Eastern or Muslim-majority nations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore (often accessed through WikiIslam's alternative domains, especially where WikiIslam has been banned).^[2] Likewise, many of the site's administrators and editors are from a Muslim background or are skeptics from Muslim majority nations.

The site is always looking for editors to translate English articles into Indonesian, Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, and other languages. There are translations from English already available at the site in several languages, including Azerbaijani, French, Turkish and Uzbek. A Russian sub-domain was started in early 2013 and a Bulgarian sub-domain was created in April, 2015.

WikiIslam vs. Wikipedia

WikiIslam's primary focus is on the religion of Islam while Wikipedia is a compendium of general knowledge. These differing goals have led to different policies and guidelines.

Wikipedia discourages the use of primary and what they term as "non-notable/reliable" sources. WikiIslam, on the other hand, (in addition to secondary scholarly sources) encourages the use of authentic primary religious text and the rulings of authoritative Muslim scholars who may not be notable to people outside of the Muslim world but who are giants from within.

Wikipedia focuses on "verifiability, not truth".^[3] In regards to Islam, it has meant they accept what "notable/reliable" western commentators say about Islam's religious texts over what the religious text and Muslim authorities actually say themselves. Conversely, WikiIslam accepts what the religious texts and Muslim authorities say over the opinions and interpretations of third-party western commentators.

See Also

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Policies and Guidelines

Contact Information

To contact WikiIslam with general ideas and suggestions, a message can be left on the relevant Discussions page. For copyright issues, click here. And for other important issues or to request an account, click here.

References