Talk:Islam/Archive 4

message: I moved the hyphens to the proper morphological boundaries: Lā ilāhā illāllāh; Muhammadu-r-rasulu-llāh. Wouldn't it be more correct to give the full i'rab, though, i.e. Lā ilāhā illā-llāhu; Muhammadu-r-rasulu-llāhi? dab 15:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: ok. you may have noticed I'm on a "unify arabic transliteration" campaign, at the moment. Another thing is this: I am not a native (or even fluent) speaker, but according to my understanding, it should be  Muhammadu-rasulu-llāhi rather than  Muhammadu-r-rasulu-llāhi (rasul in construct state). I found both versions on the internet. Which is correct? dab 18:25, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The latter; Muhammadun rasuulu llaahi > Muhammadur rasuulu llaahi, by the regular contraction n+r > rr. I think the process is termed sandhi in English. - Mustafaa 20:44, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait (sorry if I seem to abuse this page for arabic lessons), you mean to say that the first r is really nunation, i.e. indefinite state? Then the literal translation would be "there is a certain Muhammad who is the messenger of God" rather than "(the well-known) Muhammad is the messenger of God"? In that case, the properly hyphenated transcription would be Muhammadur-rasulu-llāhi. dab 08:39, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: just from books, and from a few expatriates... I would have expected Muhammadu for "the Muhammad" and Muhammadun for "a Muhammad", but I believe you, of course. dab 09:39, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: the "creed"

message: I reverted one anonymous edit that replaced the whole "Belief" section with "Islam is shit".  Zora 02:33, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This is unbearable. I've been watching this page for two days now, and it has been vandalized about five times. Is there an option to protect a page from anonymous edits while still allowing logged-in users to edit? dab 08:58, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Under attack again 

message: I have given some thought as to how to present arabic terms in this (and related) articles. There are several stages of "latinization"/"anglicization":
*arabic in arabic script: الإسلام
*arabic phrases in scientific transliteration: lā ilāhā illā-llāhu
*transliterated arabic words in english context: Allāh
*arabic words, dropped diacritics: Usul, Din.
*"english orthography" phonetic transcription: Usool, Deen
*hybrid arabic words with english morphology: Sunnite, Shiite
*Arabic loan-words in English: Moslem, Muslim, Islam, Allah....... Admiral, magazine, alcohol
They all have legitimate uses, but we should not mingle them randomly. For example, "Deen" next to "Usul" (or "Usool" next to "Din") is inconsequent. My suggestion is: 
*for entire phrases in arabic, like the creed, to use scientific transliteration with no capitalisation (it's tempting to capitalise Muhammad for example, but the name of God is difficult to capitalise consistently, because looks weird to have Llāh besides Allāh.
*For newly introduced terms, give full diacritics (Allāh, Dīn), but later occurrences can well drop the diacritics (Allah, Din), since many readers will not know what to make of them anyway, and people who want to know can take the information from the first occurrence
*loanwords and words with English morphology can be treated as English words (no italics): Muslim, Allah, Islam, Sunnite.
*transliteration options: the "official" transcriptions of alif, gim, shin, ayin are ʾ, ǧ, š, ʿ  but it doesn't do any harm to use ', j, sh, `
dab 08:58, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: transliteration, capitalisation, diacritics

message: To avoid clutter, I will put responses to different parts here:
If the oldest manuscript is hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of years latter, how do you know that everything is not a lie and fabricated? If you assume everything is fabricated, you cannot know anything about history. Archeology cannot give you a detail history of say Romans. That's not the answer. As for comparing different manuscripts, you can also compare different oral traditions in different cities and countries and see if they are consistent. That's a part of sciences of hadith (i.e. if a hadith was reported by different people at different places in such a way that it would make it impossible for all of them to conspire -- that would make it a stronger hadith). You can examine each tradition one by one and give a reason to reject each, but you cannot start with assumption that everything is fabricated and everyone is a liar (like Crone did in her book). That's clearly stupidity. 
As for Satanic Verses, they do give reasons why they do not accept the story. Like Satanic Verses
And Karen Armstrong is not an Islamic scholar, but someone like Montgomery Watt is. I don't think he (like most other scholars) reject all Islamic sources. Only a very few loony "scholars" start with the assumption that everything is fabricated. OneGuy 02:47, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  history 

message: the article states "Since Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, claims descent from the monotheist tradition of the biblical patriarch Abraham, it sees itself as an Abrahamic religion."
is this true?  Or does Islam believe/state that Abraham was a Muslim...there is quite a difference.  Lance6Wins 20:49, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: AH....perhaps I am starting to understand.  Are you saying that Islam "sees itself as THE Abrahamic religion" (Abrahamic religion meaning religion of Abraham the person) as opposed to "an Abrahamic religion" ? Lance6Wins 15:34, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual error ? 

message: Can someone start a section on where Islam stands on issues such as capital punishment, illegal drugs, alcohol, stem cell research, abortion, etc.  This would be a great addition to this article.  Thanks Monkeyman 05:32, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think you could possibly write such a section, any more than you could write an article on the Christian stand on any of these things. There are lots of Christian and Muslim sects, lots of clerics and believers, and lots of opinions. Zora 07:21, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I know very little of Islam which is why I came to this article.  An overview of their stance on issues would be a good primer for someone like me.  Surely they have stated opinions about such major issues, no?  Monkeyman 17:42, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Those are U.S. political issues, and there is an article on Islam in the United States, I believe, with links to the various U.S. Muslim organizations. If there are any statements to be made, they'd probably be found on those web pages. But the organizations might not have discussed and taken stands on these issues. Zora 18:40, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  They seem more like worldwide social issues rather than U.S. political issues. I checked out the "Islam in the United States" article but there's nothing listed relating to the above issues. Will check out the links and see if I can find anything.  Monkeyman 18:51, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: A quick glance at the other articles you mentioned shows no mention of the laundry list of issues, that I can see. The Buddhism article has a section on vegetarianism, because that comes up IN THE CONTEXT of Buddhist religious practice. The issues for which you want opinions may be burning issues for U.S. political discourse, but they aren't central to most people's religious practice. So there's no removal necessary. Zora 18:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's in the Roman Catholic Church article, not in the Christianity article. The RC church has a unified hierarchy, makes official pronouncements, and takes stands on U.S. political issues. Some officials even take stands on U.S. candidates. The RC church makes the news for doing so. So far as I know, the various Muslim groups in the U.S. have taken public stands primarily on religious discrimination issues. Now if you want to comb their web pages for stands on various issues, or write to them and ask them for their stands, that could be an interesting article. Zora 21:39, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Ok, so far the reasons for not adding this information is: The article is already too long, it's a target of vandalism, they're not social issues ... they're political issues, the information would be better suited for a different article, and that it would be impossible to write such a section.  Well you're right, it was foolish of me to expect an article on Islam to deal with modern issues that people are faced with and discuss every day.  Am I taking crazy pills???  Monkeyman 20:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There should be article on this topic. Why not right a separate article and then that can be linked from the main article like other articles are linked from different sections? OneGuy 21:05, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: look, this is an article on Islam, not on Sharia. We duly link to Sharia, and your stuff belongs there. The only bindingly uniting scripture in Islam is the Qur'an, and as Mustafaa said, it addresses alcohol and capital punishment. Gay marriage and abortion are simply not covered, and will be part of islamic nations' politics, not of Islam itself. Sheesh, this would be like treating Flat Earth on Christianity. Sure, some popes were bashing people around over the question, but that doesn't make Flat Earth a central tenet of the christian faith. dab 10:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stance on Issues