WikiIslam:Frequently Asked Questions: Difference between revisions

Besides this strict policy ''against'' censorship, the wiki also refuses to host irrelevant content. Content having nothing to do with Islam, such as an article about a certain make of car or aircraft, will be removed. This is also utterly unrelated to WikiIslam's anti-censorship policy and by no means violates it.  

Simply put; removing content that violates this website's policies is not censorship. If errors, incomprehensible English or bad formatting is inserted into articles, those edits are subject to reversion. If insults, threats and other forms of vandalism are inserted into articles, they will be wiped from the pages' history. The same principle applies to talk pages. If people violate the talk page guidelines, post insults, off-topic rants or questions on talk pages, they will be deleted or wiped from the talk page's history (depending on the nature of the comment itself). These are straightforward and commonsense policies, and in no way can they be construed as "censorship".

No. Taqiyya does not mean "lying" in Islam. It only refers to a specific doctrine, a predominantly Shi'ite one, used by them in order to save their own lives or avoid some other form of severe persecution. Critics of Islam are often ridiculed because they tend to conflate this doctrine with that of lying in general, leading to the mislabelling of all forms of religious lying as an example of "taqiyya" (See, "[[Taqiyya]]" and "[[Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Lying and Deception]]" for more information on this subject).  

When anyone refers to "Islam" without providing a qualifier, it is widely understood to mean [[Sunni]] Islam. For example, the [[Five Pillars of Islam]] is a set of beliefs specific to the Sunnis, but it is never referred to as the "Five Pillars of ''Sunni'' Islam". This is no surprise, considering the Sunnis (which include the Salafis or "Wahhabis") account for up to 90% of all Muslims. It is the original Islamic sect that all other smaller and mostly irrelevant sects broke away from. And Sunni Islam itself is also known as "mainstream" and "orthodox" Islam. WikiIslam primarily focuses on aspects of Sunni Islam. When referring to the beliefs of a version of Islam other than the mainstream, orthodox version, we always make sure the readers know this by specifying the name of the sect or cult (e.g. Shi'ite, Qur'anist, etc.).

Concerning possible variances of interpretations within Sunni Islam, there are four mainstream [[Madh'hab|schools of thought]], which are accepted by one another. Although there are some small differences in beliefs, these are negligible since the schools generally agree on the more important issues (e.g. pedophilic marriages to young girls, the death sentence for apostates, the positive view of female genital mutilation, and so on). In any case, we use the majority views held by both the followers and fuqaha’ (scholars) of Islam. If a minority view is being quoted, the name of that particular Madh'hab will be provided. Some readers may find it worth noting that many consider the minority (or more pleasant) views to be irrelevant since those who hold them also accept the majority (or more unpleasant) views as perfectly acceptable.