WikiIslam:Discussions/Visitor Inquiries

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This page is for inquiries from visitors concerning the wiki itself, not for general questions about Islam. All new discussion topics should be created at the bottom of the page, below all previous discussions, and all messages should comply with talk page guidelines.

IRC?

Have you considered opening a chat room like #wikiislam on irc.freenode.net where dialogue can occur between skeptics and Muslims in chat? --Sonja 20:59, 28 January 2011 (PST)

That would be nice but there's only a few of us regular editors here and we dont have the time to chat or moderate chat. People are asked to go to forums on other websites. --Axius 21:05, 28 January 2011 (PST)

Any interest in project to categorize the koran verses for sql database?

i've described it at FFI forum post & currently just getting started

http://forum09.faithfreedom.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10270

one approach would be for me to post an article with all the koran verses & initial category assignments (or something i'm new at this wiki stuff) and let people edit the verses to assign categories, then download the article & use as new data for the sql queries

defining the categories & assigning them to the verses is a very open ended task and can be done ranging from simple (a flat category structure & maybe a dozen categories) to complex (a 10 level category tree with 100s of categories)

for me the appeal is having functionality to query the verses based on categories, like - show all verses with categories = violence against unbelievers, show all verses with categories = theology and legal (or however the lack of seperation church/state is represented in the cats)

just having a list of verses & categories is nice but not sure how useful this list is unless can query or show them somehow. example website with verses categorized is the skeptics etc http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/Quran/

thanks

Hi Ecks, thanks for your reply to my message on the FFI forum about that post you linked. The main problem is that there arent many editors on this site, its just me and Gabe right now and we dont have any time to work on this, so you'll have to do everything yourself but we can guide you. On the wiki you can make pages and links and tables and so on. There arent any database functions. 6000 verses means it will be a huge project for one person
I saw the site you linked in your reply [1], the graphs look good.
We can teach how to make Wiki pages and edit here, and answer your questions, but basically you're on your own and you'll have to judge if what you want to do can be wholelly or partially achieved on this site. You can tell us what features you need and we can tell what is possible here and you can see if it will meet your needs. This wiki atmosphere is text based: links between pages, images, tables (sortable) etc. -- Axius 17:27, 26 July 2011 (PDT)
Hi Axius - ok i will just continue as planned & when i get closer to being finished then explore posting more info here at wikiislam. it's clearly possible to do a flat category structure just using html & links into koran verses (thats what the skeptics site does) but i wanted more than that :) which is why i'm planning for sql. automating all that page creation is the way to go, some jscript to read the sql data & emit the html pages, then just upload them etc
Ok sounds good. --Axius 16:25, 27 July 2011 (PDT)

this project fizzled out. i learned alot but not worth the effort to finish, see the post mortem notes at FFI link about. i guess this whole entry can be deleted ? --Ecks why 14:07, 5 September 2011 (PDT)

Thats ok, this will be archived when the we archive all the sections on this page. --Axius 14:44, 5 September 2011 (PDT)
Terrific idea. Should be done sometime. -Haqir

Assisting more experienced article writers

I have a question.

I'm sure there are men and women here with alot of academic experience who have started to write on extensive complex articles.

Would it be an idea that perhaps less experienced editors could assist in doing some of the research work or doing some standardization work for them? This could save the experienced ones alot of time.

I myself would like to volunteer to be one of those assistance if anyone feels they require help with their article.

Just throwing it out there. Truthseeker (talk) 12:19, 31 July 2012 (PDT)

Thanks for the offer! Much appreciated. I'm not aware of anything at the moment, but will let you know. There's always something on the tasks page if you find yourself at a loss for something to do (but note that some of the tasks may be out of date, so it would be best to check with us first). --Admin3 (talk) 05:27, 1 August 2012 (PDT)

help needed to build new article

hi. who is admin of this site? if i want to build new article, can you help me ? Yahoo (talk) 08:04, 21 May 2013 (PDT)

Hi Yahoo. Welcome to WikiIslam! There are many administrators/editors. I am one of them and will help in any way I can. Have a read through the policies. When you're ready you can create a page here or use a sandbox (User:Yahoo/Sandbox).--Sahabah (talk) 10:05, 21 May 2013 (PDT)
thanks. can anyone make cite web and book like wikipedia ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cite_web & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cite_book

and can someone give me classical islamic history book(ibn sa`d, tabari, waqedi, etc) and tafsir(tabari, etc) in english text ? i don't have them. Yahoo (talk) 11:33, 21 May 2013 (PDT)

how i can link to external web sites ? Yahoo (talk) 11:49, 21 May 2013 (PDT)

hi Yahoo, we do have a Cite web and its used in a few articles but I still need to change its output format (its input format will still be identical to Wikipedia). We have a reference archive template but it only works with WebCite. I would say, use WebCite and use the reference archive template for now. Examples of use can be seen on the template page or in any of the usage links.
We can provide some sources later on. What kind of articles do you plan on making?
You can get online Tafsirs from sites like http://www.altafsir.com/ and quote them using the quote template.
The article you made will need to have its headings capitalized. I think its a good idea. It will take time to look for all the links because there are so many and new ones are coming up all the time. I think if a fair number of links can be collected, the article can be presentable. Good luck with its completion. --Axius (talk) 16:56, 21 May 2013 (PDT)
  1. Qur'an in English: this site provides 34 compared English translations, and this site provides the English literal translation
  2. Hadiths in English: Compendium of Muslim Texts, and this site includes a few narrations that have been removed from the Compendium.
  3. Tafsirs in English: [2], [3], [4] and [5].
  4. Sira literature: [6] and [7].
  5. Fiqh: [8] and [9].
  6. Fatwa websites in English: [10] and [11]. --Sahabah (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2013 (PDT)

Scientific Method

A publicly editable web page purports that Alhazen was the father of modern scientific method. Though he may have made some advances in optics, I do not believe this is true. I am interested in improving the page. Who might be a more accurate figure of the same or earlier era, who contributed significantly to the development of scientific method? Devraj (talk) 20:28, 4 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi Devraj. I did a quick Google search and could not find such a page. Anyhow, you can work on an article here: User:Devraj/Sandbox. This particular page is a response to a specific publication, so any article on Alhazen will have to be separate from it. --Sahabah (talk) 20:46, 4 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi Sahabah, The page I'm referring to is Wikipedia's "Scientific Method" page. [12].I would appreciate any link to a source that shows that scientific experimentation was undertaken by those other than muslims who lived in the similar era as Alhazen. Other sources I read say the Christian world came up with true scientific method, but I cannot find the specific example(s) of those persons who supposedly did these experiments prior to Alhazen.

If you look at the talk page for Wikipedia's Alhazen article[13], you'll see a lot of the claims are disputed because Jagged 85 was a big contributor of the information there. We have our hub page concerning the "Golden Age", but other than that, we would suggest going to the FFI forum if you have any questions. --Sahabah (talk) 11:04, 5 July 2013 (PDT)

Inspired by Muhammad: Dog Hadiths

Hello. I looked at the links to the Hadiths concerning killing dogs and restricting to killing black dogs from this page: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Inspired_by_Muhammad#Killing_Dogs

It seems that the links do not take you to the hadiths you are quoting. Maybe the site was updated or whoever created the page made a mistake. I thought you should know.

Specifically, it's the Sahih Muslim 16:2840 and Sahih Muslim 16:2839.

I think the hadiths are Abu-Dawud: http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/abudawud/016-sat.php Paul99 (talk) 5:18, 27 August 2014 (GMT)

Number 5248 in that section you mentioned has a valid link. What specific quotes have broken links? --Axius (talk | contribs) 03:53, 29 August 2014 (PDT)

It was the bottom two hadiths under "The Black Dog is a Devil". Sahih Muslim 16:2840 and Sahih Muslim 16:2839 do not lead to the hadiths quoted, but I found the hadiths in their entirety in Abu-Dawud. You can find them at the top of the page here: http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/abudawud/016-sat. I believe that the two Hadith collections were mixed up in the post.Paul99 (talk) 20:11, 30 August 2014 (GMT)

Oh ok, yea I see it now. I fixed those now [14]. Thanks! --Axius (talk | contribs) 15:58, 30 August 2014 (PDT)

SerUm, I checked and it still says and goes to Sahih MMuslim. [User:Paul99|Paul99]] (talk) 16:25, 31 August 2014 (GMT)

Nope, it should be fixed. Check this. --Axius (talk | contribs) 10:05, 31 August 2014 (PDT)

Sorry. My mistake. My computer wasn't working correctly or something. I see it now. :) [User:Paul99|Paul99]] (talk) 1:51, 1 September 2014 (GMT)

Website organization

Hi, i would like firstly to thank you for the great work. This site helped me a lot during my years of doubt about islam. And i ll give you some feedback from a reader's perspective :

  • I think the site has a lot of good articles but it needs more organisation. Maybe making Portals shoud be added to the tasks. For example for islam and science, a Portal would be much more useful than the core article or the unergonomic site Map. In the islam and science portal for example we should find two sections: refutations of quran's miracles like big bang, embryology etc.. and for embryology for example there should be a "subsection" where all the articles should be listed History of embryology, embryology in jewish scriptures, in the quran , in the quran and the hadith... and another section for scientific errors in quran and hadith. Same goes fr other portals.
  • About the sources of the quran and hadith, when i was muslim i had to recheck every islamic quote wrote here in its arabic version (my faith made me do it) and it would be better i guess if there was this possibility to see the arabic version just next to the reference.
  • I'm gonna try to start translating some articles in French and maybe arabic if i have the time to do it.

Cheers --ArabSagan (talk) 08:49, 8 October 2014 (PDT)

  • I prefer a template to portal for all the scientific errors and abrogations but who will bell the cat? New editors are not allowed to edit mainspace. Axius is too busy for long long time and nothing is getting reviewed. Your blank confession will also stay like that. Yes French translations are welcome. Our message must get to France and the whole of French West Africa. Saggy (talk) 13:08, 8 October 2014 (PDT)
Hi. I'm happy to hear you found this site useful. Concerning your queries:
A)
  • This is the Islam Portal on Wikipedia, and this is the Islam and Science Core article on WikiIslam. Looking at them both (and leaving aside our Site Map for the moment), I do not see how a Wikipedia style portal would help people find articles quicker than our Core articles. The Wikipedia portals quite frankly are a mess. There appears little order to them or a clear method for new readers to easily find material they are after. Conversely, the TOC on Core articles make it very easy to find articles. And this site probably does not have enough articles per subject to justify a Wikipedia-style Portal which is engulfed in links all over the place (links which would probably require more energy for new readers to decipher, because they are embedded within walls of text).
  • Then there is the Site Map which you call "unergonomic". That surprises me a lot, since I cannot think of a more comfortable or easier way of navigating the entire site from a single page.
  • You suggest that we should create separate sections; one for Qur'an miracles etc., but we already have separate sections such as the ones you propose, e.g. one of them is indeed "Qur'an miracles".
  • There is no need to create a new embryology "subsection", because the embryology articles are already linked from a single heading (see here). We also do not have an "embryology in jewish scriptures" article. We have one that covers reproduction in general, and that is already linked very clearly beneath the "Embryology in Islamic Scripture" section.
So that leaves a couple of things I'd like you to do:
1. Please explain exactly how and why the enormous effort of replacing Core articles with Portals would be beneficial for us.
2. Give us a better way that readers can explore the entire site from a single page.
B) Concerning Arabic; most Muslims do not read, write or speak Arabic and this is a primarily English-language site that only uses trusted scholarly translations, so I don't see any urgency or major benefit from that. Would it be nice to have a link to Arabic versions of all sources? Probably, but it is not realistic. Where is an Arabic-speaking editor who is willing to find all of them and add them to 2,000+ articles (if each article has 50 refs, that makes at least 100,000 links)? Then where are the editors who will check each link for accuracy and maintain these same links from link rot? Like I said, it may be a nice idea, but it has little actual benefit and is not realistic. If an Arabic-speaker, does use the site, like yourself, it is probably best to let them find Arabic versions if they do not trust the English-language versions used by millions of English-speaking Muslims.
I only see one certainty in trying to do this, and that is a negative one. By including links to Arabic versions in only a few articles, this would set up an arbitrary standard that should not exist i.e. someone can then read a perfectly referenced article and then claim, "But this one doesn't have links to Arabic like the other one did", and then discard all the referenced information they had just read.
C) Translations are most welcome. I'm assuming you read those pages I provided you a while ago, but if you need further help, you can ask Axius or I (if I'm around) for help. --Sahab (talk) 13:46, 8 October 2014 (PDT)

Arab inventions

So.....arab inventions or innovations/improvements on already existing stuff doesn't matter? Sure some of the inventors could've been from other religions, but the fact remains they were all ARABS. I feel this article tries to discredit arab inventions no matter what faith they are. This is the same thing that happens in the US with black inventors, since they are a minority their inventions get attributed to whites no matter what.

Are you talking about How Islamic Inventors Did Not Change The World? The article is about claims made for "Islamic inventors", not Arab or non-Arab. --Axius (talk | contribs) 10:16, 27 November 2014 (PST)
Assuming the anon is being genuine and not simply trying to disguise an incorrect statement within a question, I would also be very interested in knowing what article they are referring to. None of what is written by our editors try to deny Arab contributions to science. In fact we make a point of mentioning that Arabs, just like every other ethnic group on this planet, have provided the world with their fair share of scientific advances. And depending on the anon's level of ignorance (and whatever article they may be referring to), even the statement that "the fact remains they were all ARABS," may be incorrect. For example, many Egyptians, Lebanese, Iranians, Syrians, etc., may speak Arabic in some form or another, but they are not ethnically Arab, nor do they consider themselves as Arabs. In fact, many of them view being called an Arab a personal insult. That hasn't stopped Islamic propagandists from depicting them as such. --Sahab (talk) 19:21, 27 November 2014 (PST)

Editing the description of the website.

I ve been using wiki-islam's links when debating online, specially the"quran, hadith and scholars" pages. And always the first response is: wikiislam is an anti-islam website so they are lying (aka using fake data) , until i tell them that they can check the authenticity of the quotes with clicking on the references. So if that was said in the description under the title of the articles, it will be a good thing for the credibility of th website. Also i'm sure this have been already discussed but i think that you should avoid using usc's database since you know how muslims are untrustful of anything that is related to jews, but i don't know what are your options or if it is easy to fix.

"anything that is related to jews" - Sounds like an attempt for us to stop using a reliable source so the content can become less reliable. The reliability is explained on the wiki page [15]. Assuming the inquiry is genuine:
During the debate did you investigate how true this claim is? People will use any excuse they can. The 3 Quran translations are well known and the hadiths are from Bukhari, Muslim and others (6 hadith collections). Ask them if they know of any reliable Quran/hadith websites. The answer is usually "Just ignore all the websites. Consult with a real Islamic scholar" which we know is a cop-out.
No data on our site is fake. You can search any hadith/verse and find the exact quotes on many other websites. The USC database was chosen because it was hosted on an educational institution's server and additional reasons are mentioned on that wiki page I linked. It used to be the website for the MSA at that university originally and currently its the Muslim-engagement center website. That doesnt effect its reliability in any way. People are free to crosscheck the hadiths and verses on other websites.
"until i tell them that they can check the authenticity of the quotes with clicking on the references" - they are visiting a website and a website is supposed to have links by default. People dont need to be told that they should click the links on a page. When someone claims a website has fake information you should challenge that statement because you know that in this case that is a false statement that has no basis. You will get better in debate with time. Additional information about the sources is in our FAQ. The FAQ page is linked on every page on the left. --Axius (talk | contribs) 11:52, 2 December 2014 (PST)

"Jihad is Perpetual" subtopic has bad link

I was looking at the "Jihad is Perpetual" subtopic of Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Fighting Non-Muslims and tried to navigate to the link to Sunan Abu Dawud Chapter 14, hadith 2526 specified there. However, it appears that USC has removed the Jihad chapter from Sunan Abu Dawud, and the link goes to Chapter 13 on fasting instead.

I did find a working link to this hadith at Sunnah.com though. It is here: http://sunnah.com/abudawud/15/8

Oddly, that hadith number is 2484, so there seems to be inconsistent hadith numbering scheme between what's specified in the wikiislam link and the one at sunnah.com. The convention used at sunnah.com seems to match up with the translation I have by Nasiruddin al-Khattab.

Indeed you are right, it is not there anymore. I have it in my local copy so yes it was removed from their website. Not sure what to do right now so I'm just going to add this to on our tasks page for now. --Axius (talk | contribs) 14:04, 14 March 2015 (PDT)

New article

Help ! I would like to create a new article. I don't see it. It's always in the sandbox. http://wikiislam.net/wiki/WikiIslam:Sandbox/Unreliable_hadeeths --Dare4 (talk) 13:43, 14 March 2015 (PDT)

Not sure what you are asking for. Can you clarify further? --Axius (talk | contribs) 13:57, 14 March 2015 (PDT)
Hi Dare4. Have you actually looked at the state of the page you created? What would make you think it's okay to take it out of the sandbox and put it in our mainspace looking like that? I've deleted that page anyhow. We already have a page that covers all those and many more (see here). Use the Site map or search function to avoid such a situation in the future. Please also read and follow the directions on WikiIslam:Message to New Users before making any further contributions. Thanks. --Sahab (talk) 15:26, 14 March 2015 (PDT)

Question about Islamic Texts

Has anybody ever combined the Qur'an, Hadith, and Ishaq/Tabari into a single, chronologically ordered document?

As far as I know it hasnt been done. I think the problem is that there's no knowledge of what happened when, so there could be a lot of variation and no one could say that their version of events is right. Maybe if someone only used important events for which they definitely knew the dates they could try. --Axius (talk | contribs) 17:12, 18 August 2015 (PDT)--Axius (talk | contribs) 17:12, 18 August 2015 (PDT)

On the subject of Islam and Chess

The Wikislam entry is deceptive and innaccurate. "Many worried chess would be banned by the "Qur'an" an Islamic law banning gambling. Chess become very popular after their theologians decided that chess playing wasn't contrary to the teachings of Mohammed. This decision took about 100 years and illustrates the curious power of a simple game. After the official decision that there was no harm in chess, the Moslems created a greatly detailed literature about it."

The Islamic prophet Mohammed did not say Chess was forbidden, a ccording to a Hadith (not Qu'ran) he is said to have compared dice to eating pork, because it was gambling. Not Chess. The Hadiths are not official Islamic doctrine. Furthermore, Chess was actually invented by the Moors in Spain, earlier versions bore little resemblance to the present game as we know it. There are no real pre-Islamic artifacts attributable to "Chess" just as there is no evidence of the Kingdom of someone named "David". In fact, 15th to 17th century Christians said the same thing about the game of chess as Muslims, that it is harmless unless it consumes an inordinate amount of one's time. Also, there is no evidence that Zoroastrians rather tham Muslims developed the game in early Persia. I have to say, I read wikislam and get the overwhelming impression that, rather than a scholarly site meant to serve as a source of accurate info on Islam, that it is a polemic endeavor, a hostile, agenda-driven vehicle...not just in the various glaring innaccuracies, but in the general tone and often unscholarly asides. I am not a Muslim, but I consider it churlish to falsely represent a religion in a negative way. It's un-American. And most people would agree with me.

ALL LINKS TO VERSES @ usc.edu ARE DEAD

ALL LINKS TO VERSES @ usc.edu ARE DEAD. Either a new site must be found, or a possible solution might be to link to an archived version of the pages through one (or more) of the following:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache: [original URL]

https://web.archive.org/web/*/ [original URL]

http://archive.is/ [original URL]

Yaakovaryeh (talk) 17:08, 18 October 2016 (EDT)

Update QuranX.com links

Please update HTTP links to QuranX.com to HTTPS.

Thanks for the suggestion (the wikiislam site itself was recently moved to https too). This has now been done. The relevant templates are all included on https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Category:Islamic_text_templates Lightyears (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
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