WikiIslam:Reliable Sources
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WikiIslam articles should be based on reliable, published sources. This page discusses the various types of sources available and their reliability.
Types of Sources
Primary Sources
Primary sources are original materials. In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called original source or evidence) is an artifact, a document, a recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. A primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person. In an article about a book (e.g. the Qur'an) it would be the book itself. In the case of a person, it would be the subject itself; e.g. if Prophet Muhammad said something about himself, his statement would be a primary source.
Secondary Sources
In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. For example, a statement by a scholar about a certain battle in the history of Islam would be a secondary source. The news articles "Fort Hood suspect condemned '09 shootings" and "Outcry over Malaysian child marriages" that report on a development or an incident are also secondary sources. Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information. Primary and secondary are relative terms, and some sources may be classified as primary or secondary, depending on how it is used.
Tertiary Sources
Tertiary sources are sources that rely upon primary and secondary sources. Unlike secondary sources, they attempt to provide a broad introductory overview of a topic. As tertiary sources, encyclopedias and textbooks attempt to summarize and consolidate the source materials, but may also present commentary and analysis. The New Encyclopedia of Islam would be an example of a tertiary source. There are a variety of encyclopedias available.
Identifying and Using Reliable Sources
Primary Sources
Primary sources would include the Qur'an and Hadith collections. At WikiIslam we use the University of Southern California Muslim Students Association's Compendium of Muslim Texts. This includes the respected and widely accepted Qur'an translations of Yusuf Ali, Marmaduke Pickthal and M. H. Shakir. Hadith translations available from the Compendium of Muslim Texts are the translation of Sahih Al-Bukhari by Muhsin Khan, the translation of Sahih Muslim by Abd-al-Hamid Siddiqui, the translation of Sunan Abu Dawud by Ahmad Hasan, and the translation of Malik's Muwatta by A'isha Abd-al-Rahman al-Tarjumana and Ya'qub Johnson.
Other useful resources concerning primary sources are the Master Ayat (Verse) Index from IslamAwakened.com which provides 34 compared English translations, and the iKnowledge Qur'an from IslamicNature.com which provides the English literal translation. The hadith collection at SearchTruth.com is also useful due to including a few narrations that have oddly been misplaced/removed from the Compendium. Primary sources are not limited and may be freely used in articles.
Secondary Sources
Tertiary Sources
Sources to Avoid
Primary Sources
Generally any translation of the Qur'an not included in the Compendium of Muslim Texts (other than the literal translation) should be avoided. In particular, the translations by orientalists (e.g. Arthur John Arberry, Edward Henry Palmer, George Sale, John Medows Rodwell and N J Dawood) or obscure translations by "progressives" that are not accepted by mainstream Muslims (e.g. Rashad Khalifa, Maulana Muhammad Ali and Laleh Bakhtiar).
Secondary Sources
Statements of fact concerning Islam from polemic sources such as books, articles or commentaries by individuals such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Gellar, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Mark A. Gabriel, Wafa Sultan, Ali Sina, Walid Shoebat, Brigitte Gabriel etc. are not to be used under any circumstance on WikiIslam as references. If you come across any such statements, remove them immediately.
Excluding the Islam in the News section, news sources that could be considered "right-wing" or "Jewish/Zionist" should also be avoided when possible (e.g. Fox News, WorldNetDaily, FrontPage Magazine, National Review, Daily Mail or Arutz Sheva). In the majority of cases, news sources such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse or Reuters would have also covered the story.
Tertiary Sources
See Also
- Help:Making References
- How is WikiIslam different from Wikipedia? (Differences concerning "non-notable/reliable" sources)