Talk:Succession to Muhammad

message: Due to a pervasive narrative bias, I felt it was necessary to do a considerable re-write of the article. It had previously been written in a manner which heavily favoured the Shia viewpoint, giving very little weight to alternate views. In addition to this, I've had to make other major changes. I don't know if anyone will view my edit as controversial, so just in case, I wanted to give a breakdown of my more prominent modifications.
My edit has resulted in the removal of a fair bit of content. Much of this was because I needed to cut down several of the subsections, which had previously been composed of complete copy-and-pastes of other articles (e.g. Saqifah, Hadith of Warning). Aside from the fact that this basically negated the need for these articles, the copy-and-pastes had also resulted in the inclusion of much irrelevant information. I tried to correct this by writing an abridged version of the content from the respective articles, including only what was directly related to the succession to Muhammad. 
I have also removed sections which only had tenuous links to the article subject. One was the "Expedition of Usama bin Zayd", which spent a considerable amount of time discussing Abu Bakr and Umar's opposition to joining a military expedition ordered by Muhammad. This sections inclusion in the article was only justified by the final sentence, which stated that Muhammad's desire for them to leave on this expedition was "proof" that he did not want them involved in his succession. This seems like conjecture at best, especially considering that the source used was a religious Shia text which did not seem especially reliable. 
Another was the "Attack on Muhammad's family", which does not seem to have any impact on the succession, and certainly not one which justifies a four-paragraph discussion. I included a brief mention of the event as well as a link to the main article. I don't think anything beyond this is really necessary. I also removed "Ali in the Quran" since again, nothing here seemed particularly relevant to the succession. The "Hadith" subsection under "Shia view" was similarly removed since all the relevant hadiths are extensively discussed in my revision of the article. 
Finally, I removed the "Western academic views" section. My reason for this is that I don't really see the purpose of its inclusion. Ignoring the fact that the section wrongly suggested that current academics have a single inflexible opinion that only the Shia viewpoint is correct, the addition of an unbiased version wouldn't really add any substance to the page, as it would essentially just rehash arguments which had already been stated. Also, given that I have already included the views of several "Western" academics throughout the article, the section would be pretty redundant. 
I added an overview of the succession in subsequent decades and centuries. I felt this was needed as much of the Shia-Sunni split in regards to the succession only occurred long after Muhammad's death. The fact that the previous lead discussed this without any mention in the main article made this discussion seem especially necessary. I also added the views of the Ibadi and Zaydi sects, as well as a discussion of a number of other hadiths.
My edit included content partially copied from Saqifah, Hadith of Warning, Hadith of the pen and paper, Caliphate, Zaidiyyah and Ibadi.Alivardi (talk) 13:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article re-write

message: I'm going to work on this article over the course of the next few weeks to improve the presentation of Shia views. I'll discuss any major changes in this section. Albertatiran (talk) 06:56, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving the presentation of minority views 

message: Collected the bibliography at the end of the article, added perhaps a dozen new reliable sources, copy-edited the article to improve neutrality and clarity. These edits are too many to summarize here but, I think, it's very clear that the revised article is better-sourced and less biased. I don't think any of the edits are controversial but, if there are any concerns, please discuss them here first. Albertatiran (talk) 19:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  New edits