Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles

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• God vs Allah

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Allah v God: just wondering...

For many years I've reverted drive-by edits in articles like Shahada and restored "God" per MOS:ALLAH in Islamic-related articles. I've done so for the sake of a consistent MOS, rather than seeing anything inherently wrong in using Allah when referring to God in Islam. I suspect I'm not alone in taking that view. But a couple of thoughts occur to me.

• First, outside of active MOS-supporting Wikipedians, it seems clear to me that most people (including most Muslims) expect to see Allah rather than God and don't really get the use of God, however technically correct in English-language terms it is. As a result some of us spend a lot of time reverting drive-by changes of God to Allah. That's fine if Allah were actually wrong and something the English-language RS don't support but that's not the case. Is this a worthwhile use of editor effort? This is exacerbated by it being quite a difficult point to explain the difference between God and god - quite a few native English speakers don't get it let alone 2nd language-English speakers. ("There is no god but God"...) As a result large swathes of Wikipedia articles end up using Allah rather than God and the whole consistency point is lost anyway.
• Secondly, I tried to find the where the decision to prefer God over Allah was made. I was quite surprised to see how few were involved in the discussion and how flimsy the arguments were. (But just to be clear, I'm not saying using "God" is technically incorrect at all.)

Is it time to reconsider this and, if nothing else, to recognise the inevitability of the greater popularity of Allah. DeCausa (talk) 01:44, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Allah may be more popular among a certain strand of Wikipedia editors who see their editing as part of their religious duty (in Islam, spreading Islamic religious knowledge is a virtue) and who regard the use of Arabic words a an identity marker, or as another form of religious virtue (God made the Quran an Arabic one and the prophet Muhammad spoke Arabic, so using Arabic is sometimes regarded as part of the behavioral pattern or sunna to be emulated).

But the critical point is that reliable (academic) sources on Islam by far prefer the use of God. This is because using Allah may mislead into thinking that it is a proper name for the Islamic God specifically, while in reality it's just the Arabic language word for 'God' (as easily deduced from that fact that Arabic Jews and Christians also use the word Allah for 'God'). Because of this preponderance of God in reliable sources and the concurrent preponderance of Allah in Islamic identity politics, reading 'Allah' really gives a bad impression. It's bad style, and I do think it's worth to continue enforcing it, especially for drive-by edits where the motive clearly is identity politics. It's a bit like with the Islamic honorifics, something we won't ever really get rid of. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 15:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The case around the usage of 'Allah' is one that Wikipedia certainly does not approach in a particularly nuanced manner. The situation is certainly a little more complex than Allah being the Arabic language word for God, because, for a start, which god? It is also more of a name than a common noun. It would be slightly more accurate to suggest that Allah is the Arabic language name for God in the Abrahamic faiths. The evidence that it had widespread currency outside of this context is considerably weaker. Unlike with "God", which in the New Testament is typically derived from theos (god) or adonai (lord), Greek words that are indeed common nouns, there is no such parallel ambiguity with "Allah", which cannot be used to denote simply 'a god', for which the word is 'elah'. There is also the question of whether systemic bias may be at work in the way in which Wikipedia prefers the generic translation of 'God', following what I imagine is the emergent choice of the largely Western Christian scholarship. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

"Allah(u)" does simply denote "the God","al-ilah" الْإِلٰه or الْإِلٰهُ, as a contraction of that, ٱللَّٰه or ٱللَّٰهُ, and transparently so. Etymologically, it's no less a common noun than capital-G "God". Largoplazo (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Wait, wait, I was just making an effort to explain why reliable sources use God rather than Allah. What Largoplazo says is correct and is also part of that reason. But if a WP editor does not agree with reliable sources and claims that Allah (lit. 'the god', i.e., the one godhead as described in the Abrahamic tradition) is anything other than the closest equivalent in Arabic of capitalized 'God' in English, then that's just not relevant: we follow usage in reliable sources.

Claiming that reliable sources are biased is a non-starter, because that could in principle be used to push any editorial point of view. If reliable sources are biased, then that's just tough luck: we follow reliable sources. Of course they are not biased in this case, and of course when editors claim bias in reliable sources it's almost always due to ignorance on their own part, but in any case bias in reliable sources can only be countered with other reliable sources: if all or nearly all of them are 'biased', then that's just what we will have to work with. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

And I was just saying that Wikipedia's approach isn't very nuanced on the subject. On the etymology side of things, it is worth noting that all the theories are just that, and this also misses the point, which is that "Allah" now has a distinct meaning as a word/name from whatever its etymological origins were, and cannot be used interchangeably as a stand-in for any sentence containing 'the God' - it's more like the other way around: "al-ilah" with an "al-" is by default understood to refer to "Allah" (whichever Abrahamic version), and requires context to denote that a non-Abrahamic god is being referred to. I incidentally wasn't saying that the systemic bias in this instance is something that either can/should be fixed - I was purely noting it in the spirit of enquiry of this thread. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:16, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

The references in Islam-related articles are to the same being as they are in Christianity and Judaism, so why should we use a different name as if to imply that it's a different being? There are likewise Jews (Ashkenazic Jews, at least) who, while speaking or writing English, nevertheless refer to God as "Elohim" or "Eloheynu" or, as a matter of taboo, "Elokim" or "Elokeynu", or else as "Adonai" or, euphemistically, "Adoshem", but it would likewise confuse readers and convey a misimpression if those terms were used here.

Also, don't Muslims generally know that "Allah" is simply a contraction of "al-ilah", basically "the god"? Isn't that transparent to Arabic speakers? Largoplazo (talk) 19:10, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I think that most Arabic speakers know this, but not the great great majority of Muslims who are not Arabs. It's a form of ignorance, really. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The thread has gone off in a slightly different direction than I was meaning - but that shouldn't surprise me. My starting point was that Allah and God have an identical meaning - the single monotheistic deity - and validity in English usage. Iskandar is quite wrong in suggesting that God is any less specific than Allah. But I also don't agree with Apaugasma's suggestion that Allah "is bad style". Plenty of RS use Allah and I'm very doubtful that there is a preponderance of "God" in RS - or at least a preponderance is so apparent that it would make use of "God" by us de rigeur. Perhaps Allah is used by some in identity politics. But it is also used and widely understood by most (I would argue) non-Muslim native English speakers as "God in Islam" (and to whom the difference between God and god is incompletely understood). Making ourselves understood to our readership should, in my view, be more important than fear of being seen to kow tow to those who are using WP to advance a particular religious perspective. DeCausa (talk) 22:27, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Ah. BUT. :) Let X be the set of all reliable sources in English that refer to the Abrahamic God by some name. X is X is still X whether someone is writing an article about Saint Paul, the prophet Elijah, Omar Khayyam, or Bertrand Russell. In checking reliable sources for the name by which God is most customarily known, we shouldn't, therefore, get a different outcome in each case. Largoplazo (talk) 00:12, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

DeCausa, I agree that we shouldn't let purported religious perspectives influence our decision making. But despite popular associations, Allah is not just 'God in Islam', it's also 'God in Judaism' and 'God in Christianity', in Arabic. Just ask one of the c. 1,500,000 Arab Christians about this. You also forget that Allah is potentially misleading, because it may suggest that it's a proper name for some native god different from the Jewish and Christian God. This is in fact a common misconception. Maybe for this reason in particular it very much is de rigeur in RS to use God rather than Allah. This is rather hard to prove, but for starters just look at the usage in other encyclopedic sources like Encyclopaedia of Islam (2 & 3), Encyclopædia Iranica, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, or the Persian-origin Encyclopaedia Islamica: searching for Allah will only yield the article on Allah and articles on concepts or personal names which include Allah, while searching for God will show that God is consistently used to refer to, well, God: [1] vs [2], [3] vs [4], [5] vs [6], [7] vs [8]. Unfortunately Encyclopædia Iranica's search function does not work very well for this, but just ctrl-f "Allah" and "God" in any random Iranica article like [9] [10] [11] [12]. I know that the use of Allah is not completely unheard of in RS, but I'm still curious as to what sources you had in mind. Probably scholars who are neither arabists nor Islamic studies scholars? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:16, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

@DeCausa: "God", derived from theos, is very definitely less specific than "Allah". E.g.: hits regarding Hinduism. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:57, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Not to say that we shouldn't be using "God", if that's the trend in reliable sources, but again, there's some nuance. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:12, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment: Back to the original question - where I think the project often gets this wrong is inside of English language quotations, where "Allah" is often expunged for "God" even though, ironically, this style guide makes a clear allowance for English-language quotations. This can be seen on God in Islam, where all of the Qur'anic quotes have had "Allah" replaced with "God" even though all of the various translations linked to at perseus.tufts use 'Allah'. Is this the correct stance on MOS:ALLAH? Iskandar323 (talk) 10:10, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Or on Allah, where in the Islam part the first lines of Al-Ikhlas become: "SAY, God is one GOD; the eternal GOD", which is almost nonsensical, when all of the normative translations make a lot more sense simply by using 'Allah', e.g.: "Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute" Iskandar323 (talk) 10:19, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

My interpretation of the guideline exempting English language quotations is that this naturally extends to translations. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:21, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Of course, quotations of text in English (even if those quotations are translations) should leave them as they are. Largoplazo (talk) 10:30, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Huh? Quotations should always be literal. They shouldn't even exclude spelling or grammar mistakes, let alone that they should exclude things contrary to the MOS. Please, wherever you find a quotation modified, replace it with the original quotation on sight. That's not to say of course that we couldn't consciously choose for Quran translations that use 'God', as all the best translations in various languages do (Perseus only lists very outdated English translations that are in the public domain). We should probably for the most part be using Arberry (the classic go-to translation for anglophone academia) or The Study Quran (perhaps the new academic standard). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:13, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

@Apaugasma well said. I agree completely. We do not change quotations, something which I see happening all to often. Doug Weller talk 13:41, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

• It is true, as said above, Allah is a contraction of Al-Ilah (and as a sidenote, I can say as an Arab that at least half of Arabs don't know this). But it has come to be used as a reference to God in Islam. So when it is said that "there is no deity but God..) which God? The ⬡ Bestagon ^T/_C 08:01, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  The correct way to phrase that question in English is "which god?" (lower case "g") to which the answer is "God" (upper case G). DeCausa (talk) 08:19, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Sea of blue recommendation

MOS:MUHAMMAD recommends the text Islamic prophet Muhammed, but this is a sea of blue: it is unclear that there are multiple links and unclear where clicking on each part of the text will take you. Can we not just have Islamic prophet Muhammed, keeping the most specific link? — Bilorv (talk) 09:43, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

• Agreed – I often see this in articles and remove the Islamic prophet link citing the exact same sea of blue reasoning in my edsum. It would probably help if we were not actually recommending it in the MoS. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:42, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
• Maybe for this one, editors need to amend the MOS:MUHAMMAD by having a discussion on that MOS' talk page first. Chongkian (talk) 00:25, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

  MOS:MUHAMMAD is a section of MOS:ISLAM, so this is the right talk. Since there has been no opposition, I've made the change (I did retain the link to Islamic though, which may in some cases be overlinking, but since we're explicitly talking about the first reference in the article/lead here, it will often not be in this particular case). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:38, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed Oh ya, you are right. Thanks for the explanation and also thanks for the changes made. So far I am ok with the current existing MOS:MUHAMMAD's MoS. We need some simplification here for addressing his subsequent names written in an article, unless it is the first mentioned in an article - more or less. Chongkian (talk) 04:33, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Islamic honorifics and user-generated calligraphic images

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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MOS:ISLAMHON currently reads:

In keeping with the neutral nature of Wikipedia, Islamic honorifics should generally be omitted from articles (whether Arabic or English), except where they are part of quotations.

I propose changing this to:

In keeping with the neutral nature of Wikipedia, Islamic honorifics should generally be omitted from articles (whether Arabic or English), except where they are part of quotations or images.

Images containing Islamic honorifics or calligraphy should have a well-documented usage outside of Wikipedia and not be user-generated.

Rationale:

Currently we have numerous articles featuring user-generated calligraphic images containing Islamic honorifics such as raḍiya Allāh ʿanhu (= 'God be pleased with him', e.g. Ali, Abu Hurayra, al-Ash'ari, al-Ghazali), raḍiya Allāh taʿālā ʿanhu (= 'God Most High be pleased with him', e.g. Umar), ʿalayhā al-salām (= 'peace be upon her', e.g. Fatima bint Asad), etc. Compare this with some other (often good or featured) articles, which have calligraphy taken from historical or architectural sources (e.g., Muhammad, Ibn al-Khatib), historical coins (e.g., al-Zubayr, Harun al-Rashid), postage stamps (e.g., Avicenna, al-Biruni), or simply no lead image at all (e.g., Mu'awiya).

The images in the latter type of articles may also contain Islamic honorifics, but these were first used by historical or other significant Islamic actors, and their usage can be documented with reliable sources. The calligraphic images containing the honorifics in the first type of articles are user-generated (compare also WP:USERGENERATED), which will generally mean that they are not used as such in historical or significant contemporary Islamic contexts. Thus, as images they fail to be "significant and relevant in the topic's context" (MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE). More than that, the fact that they are used almost exclusively on Wikipedia means that they could be regarded as presenting Islamic honorifics in wiki-voice.

This can also lead to other problems: recently a user added calligraphic images of unclear provenance featuring the names of the terrorist leaders Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi and Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi followed by the honorifics raḥmat Allāh ʿalayhi (= 'God's mercy be upon him') and ḥafiẓahu Allāh taʿālā (= 'God Most High save him'), respectively. In the ensuing discussion, they cited the many articles containing similar user-generated calligraphy.

This is a very specific problem involving user-generated Islamic calligraphy, which even if not containing explicit honorifics is still clearly created to 'honor' the subject. User-generated art does have its purposes elsewhere on Wikipedia, but in the case of Islamic calligraphy it will be unencyclopedic in almost all cases. New or inexperienced users are often unaware of the reasons for this, and experienced users have allowed user-generated calligraphy to proliferate because there is no clear guidance which they can cite to remove it. This proposal is meant to change that. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Non-exhaustive list of articles featuring user-generated Islamic honorifics at this time (feel free to add)

Aban bin Uthman bin Affan ‘Abbas ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf Abd Allah ibn Umar ibn al-Khattab Abd al-Razzaq al-San'ani Abdullah ibn Abbas Abdullah ibn Masud Abdullah ibn Salam Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr Abu al-Aas ibn al-Rabiah Abu Bakr Abû Dhar al-Ghifârî Abu Hanifa Abu Hurairah Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah Ahmad ibn Hanbal Aisha Ali ibn Abi Talib Ammar bin Yasir Anas ibn Malik al-Ash'ari Asmâ' bint Abî Bakr Aqeel ibn Abi Talib al-Baqillani al-Bayhaqi Companions of the Prophet al-Daraqutni Fakhr al-Din al-Razi Fatimah bint Asad al-Ghazali Hafsa bint Umar ibn al-Khattab Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib Hasan al-Basri Hasan ibn Ali Hashim ibn Abd Manaf Hisham ibn al-A'as Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman Husayn ibn Ali Hujr ibn 'Adi Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani Ibn Hajar al-Haytami Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Ishaq ibn Rahwayh Jaban al-Kurdi Ja'far ibn Abi Talib al-Juwayni Khadijah bint Khuwaylid al-Khansa al-Khatib al-Baghdadi List of caliphs List of organisms named after famous people (born before 1800) Lubaba bint al-Harith Malik al-Ashtar Malik ibn Anas Maymuna bint al-Harith Mu'adh ibn Jabal Mus`ab ibn `Umair Qadi Iyad Ramlah bint Abi Sufyan Ruqayyah bint Muhammad Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas Sa'd ibn Mu'adh Sa'd ibn Ubadah Sa'id ibn Zayd Safiyyah bint ‘Abd al-Muttalib Safiyya bint Huyayy Salman al-Farisi Sawdah bint Zam'ah al-Shafi'i Sufyan ibn ʽUyaynah Sufyan al-Thawri Suhayb ar-Rumi al-Suyuti Talhah ibn Ubaydullah Tamim Abu Ruqayya Tamim al-Dari Ubayy ibn Ka'b Umamah bint Zaynab Umar Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad Umm Salamah Umm ul-Banin Urwah ibn Zubayr Usama ibn Munqidh Usama ibn Zayd Uthman Zakariyya al-Ansari Zayd ibn al-Khattab Zayd ibn Harithah Zayd ibn Thabit Zaynab bint Jahsh Zaynab bint Khuzayma Zaynab bint Muhammad Zubair ibn al-Awam Articles featuring user-generated Islamic calligraphy without explicit honorifics (feel free to add) Abd Allah ibn Hanzala Abd al-Muttalib Fatima bint Muhammad Ibn Kathir al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi al-Nawawi al-Tabari Ubadah ibn al-Samit

Editors at WT:ISLAM, WP:VPP, WP:NPOVN, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images, and the talk pages of various Islamic figures have been notified of this discussion.

• Support: I once had started an initiative of getting such calligraphies at DCW but my mind has changed since then. The rationale that Apaugasma has provided above is fair enough. Best, ─ The Aafī (talk) 04:21, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support, per the rationale above. We should also discourage the use of calligraphy as the primary representation when we have images available, due to the latter providing more benefit to the reader. BilledMammal (talk) 17:41, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support. I totally agree with the nom. We really should have a policy on this to prevent calligraphic bombing of our articles. I thank the nom for starting this. AhmadLX-(Wikiposta) 18:03, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support User Apaugasma has provided a detailed and helpful description of the problem (a problem of which I think many of us were not aware). These images are certainly unsuitable for WP and seem to circumvent (whether intentionally or not) existing policies. The use of such images on WP to glorify and celebrate modern mass-murders reflects badly on us, and all images of this kind should be forbidden. Jeppiz (talk) 20:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support. I couldn't agree more. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:06, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support, per the rationale outlined by the nom. –Austronesier (talk) 21:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Comment, I am not necessarily against this but I think the usage of them is not necessarily deliberately trying to be non-neutral. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:09, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support, Fair enough. I agree, per nomination.--TheEagle107 (talk) 22:13, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per the rationale provided. This has been a problem in several articles, where users have uploaded calligraphy of their own creation. This will prevent further issues with edit wars to change the calligraphy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by C.Fred (talk • contribs) 23:29, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
• Comment To be honest, I was expecting some more opposition. Do editors here realize that the 114 articles currently listed above (and there are many more) will lose their lead image, and that in most cases these will be very hard to replace (realistically, they won't)? In my view, articles will be better off without lead image than with user-generated calligraphy, and this is precisely what multiple featured articles do, but it is a trade-off that should be carefully weighed.

For some (most) user-generated calligraphic images the decision to reject them may be made easier by the fact that they are often badly done, but in this context it should be noted that there are also some that are quite beautiful (e.g., the one currently in the featured article al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi). The objective argument against them is that being created by a random internet user, they do not illustrate the subject's notability and significance in a real-world Islamic context. But is that enough to de facto prefer no images at all?

There is of course the additional problem that the great majority of user-generated calligraphic images also contain inappropriate honorifics (106 of the 114 articles currently mentioned), and that most editors cannot differentiate these because they do not read Arabic, but the question stands: is it worth leaving countless articles without lead image? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:03, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't see that as a problem. The immense majority of articles about persons don't have a lead image. In these cases, the lead image serves no encyclopedic value as they are merely user-generated text, not an actual picture. So taking that into account has no impact on my view that these images, some of which are highly offensive and inappropriate, should be removed. Jeppiz (talk) 02:05, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In short, yes, it is better to have no image in these cases, as WP:MOSIMAGES recommends. Al Ameer (talk) 02:25, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support (edit conflict) Thanks to the nom for bringing this up here rather tackling this issue on an individual article basis. The user-generated calligraphy found in many articles about early Islamic figures serve no encyclopedic purpose, their main purpose being to honor the subjects of the articles, which is against Wiki guidelines. They are primarily or solely decorative. Even if the honorifics are removed, what would be left other than an artistic, Arabic rendering of the name? We already provide the Arabic names in all of these articles. Al Ameer (talk) 02:25, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Thanks to Apaugasma for bringing this issue in a very concise and well-considered manner. Articles about historical figures are generally plagued by the addition of pseudo-historical images, and it is difficult to draw a line (is a completely fictional and ahistorical 18th-century depiction from some book uploaded at Google Books encyclopedically notable, or representative of the subject?) but these images are clearly just decorations: they do not facilitate understanding of the subject, do not add any knowledge about it, and are indecipherable to most people to boot. Constantine ✍ 16:08, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support I don't think I have anything to add to the above. Much needed to fill a gap in our guidelines. Doug Weller talk 16:49, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support User-generated calligraphy does not contribute to the understanding of a topic – with the possible exception of articles about particular calligraphic styles, although a strong case would have to be made – and it does no harm for an article to be without a lead image if the alternative is a lead image without encyclopaedic value. Folly Mox (talk) 19:58, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
• Comment – In the spirit of the 'implement' advice at WP:PGCHANGE, I have started to remove the user-generated calligraphy from the 114 pages listed above. I am using the edit summary "remove user-generated calligraphy, per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#Islamic honorifics and user-generated calligraphic images". Let's see if this draws in any oppose rationale. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Question about using ﷺ in WP-articles

Obviously there's nothing wrong with using pbuh etc in quotes etc. But should ﷺ be used as a substitute in article text, like in Hadith of Gabriel? It doesn't seem reasonable to me to expect the general reader to know what that means. And if I want to replace it in this, and perhaps some other articles,[13] what should I replace it with? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

First it's important to check whether the 'quote' (put between quotation marks or indented with a blockquote) is really a piece of text literally copied from some source, because I have often found it to be a translation from an Arabic source apparently done by a Wikipedia editor. Per OR policy such translations are acceptable if there is no good source which could be copied from without copyright violation, but 'Wikipedia translations' should not use the explicit Islamic religious convention of leaving ﷺ untranslated. Instead, wherever the Arabic text has صلى الله عليه وسلم (the spelled out version of ﷺ) it should be literally translated, perhaps as "[Muhammad], God bless him and grant him salvation, " (the translation given by Wehr's dictionary, p. 611, lemma صلعم; a ref to Wehr can also be added where appropriate).

However, if an English-language source is literally copied from and ﷺ occurs as such in the source (as it does in the source used in Hadith of Gabriel), it should not be changed without switching out the entire quote and using another source. We just cannot afford to change the content of a supposedly literal quote. Note that scholarly sources will never use the untranslated ﷺ, which as noted is an explicitly religious Islamic convention. Religious sources like sunnah.com should be avoided (I also wonder whether this one in particular can be used without copyvio?), but I guess that in many cases nothing better is (easily) available.

If the only worry is intelligibility for the reader, it may be considered to add "[= "God bless him and grant him salvation"] after ﷺ or to explain its meaning in an explanatory footnote. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:58, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Or, rather than the bracketed aside or footnote, possibly wikilink it? ﷺ - I know wikilinks are mildly discouraged in quotes, but this seems like the least interruptive form (although it goes to a page in general on Islamic honorifics and not directly to an explanation of that specific one.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 22:38, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

My personal preference would be in-text "explanation" at first mention/wikilink (footnote second choice), I think it's generally good for "inside language", see Four Noble Truths for example. In this particular case, the wikilink is a bit hard to spot. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:06, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

That the Hadith of Gabriel text could be per source didn't even occur to me :/ I have no objection to that, but an added explanation like [14] is good, I think. It can be cited if necessary. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:00, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Academic sources, translations etc. also spell it out, instead of using "ﷺ". Therefore, I would stick to spelling out, until "ﷺ" becomes frequent in published papers. Until then, I see no reasons to use "ﷺ" in the first place. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 14:04, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Quotes should be literal, this should be first priority. I believe that this essential and universal editorial principle is crucial enough to seek wider community input about it if some editors would like to break it. Thus, since replacing ﷺ by an English translation changes the literal content of the quote, if the source we quote has ﷺ, we write ﷺ. If we explain it in-text, we should use square brackets, per another universal editorial principle also reflected in MOS:BRACKET (hence [15]). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:28, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

In the particular Hadith of Gabriel case, it may be possible to find a source that doesn't use ﷺ. Whether this should be done is a different question. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:31, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Btw, we should perhaps mention ﷺ somewhere on the article it redirects to. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:19, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

At first I had doubts about the decision of the contributors at the Indonesian Wikipedia, but I feel somewhat relieved after reading this discussion. @Apaugasma answered it sensibly and clearly, it can be used as a reference for other users who may have questions. Addendum: in the Indonesian Wikipedia itself, the use of ﷺ (generated by id:template:saw) is only allowed to be used for citations and sources (references, although it's not recommended), while ﷺ remains in widespread use in the Arabic Wikipedia. ▪︎ Fazoffic _{( ʖ╎ᓵᔑ∷ᔑ)} 13:57, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Which makes sense, since afaict by zooming in a lot, ﷺ is arabic. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:17, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistency in the use of "-iyya" and "-ism" in articles about Islam

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islam

In articles about Islam on Wikipedia, in both titles and text bodies, there is a widespread inconsistency in the use of suffixes forming the nouns of systems of belief, doctrines and movements: some occurrences use the Arabic suffix -iyya, while some others use the Western suffix "-ism", and still others use the noun-adjective rather than the noun (e.g. Hanafi school instead of Hanafism), giving the impression of an unsystematic and confusing approach to the subject. Given that almost all Islamic -iyyas, i.e. Islamic branches, currents, doctrines, sects, schools and orders, are also often rendered with "-ism" (e.g. Ashariyya = "Asharism", Zaydiyya = "Zaydism", Ismailiyya = "Ismailism"), I suggest to adopt a consistent style and switch to "-ism" in every case, given that this is the English Wikipedia. It would also be better to avoid diacritics (i.e. not "Ash'arism" but "Asharism"; not "Isma'ilism" but "Ismailism"), since they are unuseful and overcomplicating for English readers. Æo (talk) 12:54, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I 100% agree. You should write the above into the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles.Tiny Particle (talk) 09:17, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

The presence or absence of diacritics is determined by WP:MOSAR, which differs for the letters 'ain and hamza. More broadly, I have been actively involved in ironing out some of these inconsistencies, and there is definitely already some internal logic governing why madhhabs (law schools) are listed as "X school", but theological branches (philosophical or ideological schools) are "isms". Iskandar323 (talk) 09:40, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@Tiny Particle, @Iskandar323: Thank you for your your opinions and apologies for the delayed reply. I have added a section about this matter to the Islam MoS, as requested. Here. Please check and give your contribution if needed. Æo (talk) 15:41, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

A discussion should definitely be raised on the guideline talk page first. Guideline pages are fairly formal (less so than policy, but more so than essays), and so any major changes to them require substantive discussion beforehand. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:02, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The regular WP practice is to let this type of thing be decided by most common usage in reliable sources (RS). It's true that most of the time RS will more commonly use -ism terms rather than -iyya terms, but in some specific cases where the reverse might be true, having a rule enforcing the use of -ism could turn out to be problematic. My impression is that adding this to MOS:ISLAM would be a form of wp:instruction creep, and that it's better to change instances of -iyya to -ism on the basis of a perusal of RS (and taking the opportunity to actually improve the articles in the process!).

It's also important to note that Asharism is extremely uncommon in RS (312 results on GS, and many of those are not RS), while Ash'arism without doubt is the common name (1560 results on GS, mostly top-quality sources). The case of Ismailism vs Isma'ilism is less extreme, with 3160 results for the former vs 1390 results for the latter (at least on GS Ismailism clearly wins, though Isma'ilism by no means is as marginal as Asharism, and in my personal experience actually is more common in the best sources). Anyways, comparing both cases shows that RS in some cases adopt contrary conventions than in others. It would be very ill-advised to force one convention on all terms, thereby creating monstrosities such as Asharism. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:57, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree with what @Apaugasma has said above. ─ The Aafī (talk) 17:38, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

This gets very complicated, we sometimes need -iyya instead of -ism. Many Muslim sources also use -iyya instead of -ism, and homogenizing this means having to change everything -iyya to -ism (am I right?). Although this sounds mixed, I do not agree that the whole -iyya should be shifted to -ism because -iyya seems to be more popular in the Muslim world than -ism, which tends to be used only in the West. Then, doesn't Wikipedia use a more commonly found naming standard? ▪︎ Fazoffic _{( ʖ╎ᓵᔑ∷ᔑ)} 06:45, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

When you say "more popular in the Muslim world", do you mean in Muslim English-language sources? Don't forget we should be steered by English-language usage in sources that meet the WP:RS criteria. DeCausa (talk) 06:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Bearing in mind that en.wiki defers to English-language sources, as a general rule I have found that -iyya endings tend to be better preserved in academic literature, where strict transliterations find more favor, while -isms are favored by sources aimed at accessibility. What this in effect means is that more mainstream topics tend to get -ism-ified, while more obscure topics see a greater prevalence of -iyya usage. However, imposing any kind of rule moderating this would likely be to go against WP:COMMONNAME in many instances, and so would be disempowered, since WP:COMMONNAME is policy and style guides are style guides, so in cases of dispute between policy and style guide, policy would still win. More generally, it's mainly just a WP:AINTBROKE-type issue. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree if this matter is returned to WP:COMMONNAME, it looks better than laying down a rule that seems to go against it. In my opinion, the word 'inconsistency' is inappropriate, because their usages (-iyya and -ism) are equally widely used. ▪︎ Fazoffic _{( ʖ╎ᓵᔑ∷ᔑ)} 02:48, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

NPOV usage of "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet"

MOS:MUHAMMAD currently states:

The Prophet or (The) Holy Prophet (including with a lowercase 'h') in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad"; or just Prophet preceding "Muhammad" — recommended action is to simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary.

Reliable sources (RS) very commonly use the phrases "the prophet Muhammad", "the Prophet Muhammad", or (at second mention) "the prophet" or "the Prophet" to refer to Muhammad. Therefore, only allowing the use of "Muhammad" or "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" runs contrary to NPOV ("If a name is widely used in reliable sources (particularly those written in English) and is therefore likely to be well recognized by readers, it may be used even though some may regard it as biased").

I am hoping that enough editors familiar with RS on the subject –who will not require any evidence for the fact stated above– will reply here, but for the majority of other editors some preliminary evidence (all either from top publishers or top scholars in the field) is [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].

Also for the benefit of editors not familiar with RS on the subject, I'll briefly explain why high-quality RS adopt this seemingly religious or non-neutral usage. "Muhammad" is one of the most used names in the world, and especially in historical Islamic contexts there are a ton of Muhammads (a common usage was to call every first child Muhammad after the prophet). Now it is a peculiarity of historical primary sources that Muhammad's fuller name Muhammad ibn Abd Allah was hardly ever used, a pattern also adopted by modern secondary sources (e.g., his fuller name does not even appear in the lead of the Encyclopaedia of Islam article on him here). However, because there were and are so many Muhammads, simply "Muhammad" is often ambiguous enough to warrant disambiguation. To deal with this, scholarly secondary sources commonly disambiguate using "prophet" as if it were part of his name: 'which Muhammad?' is not answered by 'Muhammad ibn Abd Allah', but by 'the prophet Muhammad' or 'the prophet'.

When Wikipedia editors are writing about Muhammad and are confronted by a situation where just "Muhammad" would be ambiguous (even if only slightly, which covers e.g. all instances where otherwise a full name would be used), there is absolutely no reason why they should not –per NPOV– follow the common usage of RS with regard to this and use "the prophet Muhammad" or (after first mention) "the prophet". Though generally Wikipedia editors should be allowed to adopt the expressions used by the very RS they are using to write their articles, in line with the broader guidelines on capitalization in Wikipedia's Manual of Style ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") it does make sense to disallow the capitalized "the Prophet Muhammad" or "the Prophet". I therefore propose to change the guideline to something like the following:

The Prophet or (The) Holy Prophet (including with a lowercase 'h') in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad"; or just Prophet preceding "Muhammad" — either simply use "Muhammad", or use the neutral and lowercase phrases "the prophet Muhammad" / (optionally after first mention) "the prophet", except in the first reference in some articles, where "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" may be used for clarity.

It may be a good idea to go through an RfC for this, but before we do so I would like to discuss any possible objections and/or alternatives. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Editors at WT:ISLAM and Talk:Muhammad have been notified of this discussion. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I basically agree. The style guide as it stands overreaches and should leave more flexibility for disambiguation options on a case by case basis. The current emphasis on using "Muhammad" all the time, even in place of "the prophet", is clunky and leads to repetitive, unnatural prose. The proposed de-emphasis on needing to say "Islamic" on the first mention is also important, as this is redundant on obviously Islamic articles, and frequently redundant in general, since "prophet Muhammad" has a very clear primary topic as a phrase. These changes are more generally a positive per WP:NOTBURO. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:53, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that there are very few if any case where simply "the prophet" would be both needed and appropriate. While there may be times when going into a paragraph that it may not be clear which Muhammed from history we are talking about, are there really many cases where, say, Muhammed the prophet was talking to Muhammed the dentist... and said dentist is not at least as well known by his last name and more properly referred to by it? Perhaps you have some examples of just that problem (not, to be clear, necessarily dentistry), but barring that, it just seems to be suggesting a usage that does carry a bit of bias, at least the implication that he was a creator of accurate prophecy. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Any given article on a pope, such as Pope Francis, might occasionally naturally say something like "yada yada yada, the pope did X", or "Mx Y asked the pope Z", just as an article about an artist might say "the artist did X", etc. These are just normal descriptive sentences. It does not imply that the pope is an affirmed intercessor between Catholics and God, or that an artist is genuinely artistic: these are just job titles, as routinely used in sources, and so NPOV to repeat. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:13, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

@Nat Gertler: for example, when one writes about the fifth Shia Imam Muhammad al-Baqir and then wants to mention the prophet, just writing "Muhammad" would be highly ambiguous. Even if al-Baqir himself is referred to as "al-Baqir" at second mentions, "Muhammad" would still be easily misunderstood as just another reference to Muhammad al-Baqir.

The problem is that "Muhammad" is only a single name: whereas "Jack Smith" would become "Smith", what to do with the (ubiquitous) "Muhammad"? Whereas a discussion of "Jack Smith" and "Jack Johnson" would soon be talking about "Smith" and "Johnson", what with "Muhammad al-Baqir" and "the prophet Muhammad"? Here "the prophet" serves as as concise and clear reference: "al-Baqir" and "the prophet". Note that I myself needed to resort to this in the first sentence of this comment. How could it be done differently?

More important to keep in mind though is that is my attempt at explaining why this is the common usage in reliable sources. But strictly speaking, this should be irrelevant: the real reason why we should adopt this usage is the fact that it is the most common one in reliable sources. Hope this helps, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Then that seems like a good time to lead in by including the full Muhammad ibn Abd Allah name in establishing matters, and then rely on the last name to separate from others of the same first name. Zooming over to Merriam-Webster the first three definitions of prophet all include some actual special ability. This makes it more in line with such terms as "psychic" or "messiah", which we would similarly avoid as a generic unqualified descriptor. (Our use of "Islamic prophet" is much in line with, say, "self-proclaimed psychic"; it indicates the source for the point of view of the term, rather than making it Wikipedia voice.) Our style guide, while it can be inspired by that of others, is not reliant upon it, particularly when we must live up to policies. Things are considered reliable sources for their content, not for their style. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 22:45, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the current guidance is too rigid and doesn't reflect real world RS usage. But, we wouldn't want someone demanding that Alexander always repetitively be "the Great" in every mention, based on the MOS and RS. Ultimately, I see this as literally a stylistic question (i.e. good writing style) rather than a NPOV or RS issue. I'd prefer it to keep "Muhammad" as the primary/default position in any given article but allow "prophet Muhammad" as an alternate where local consensus identifies specific instances in an article where it would be beneficial eg ambiguity or other context. Not keen on just "the prophet". That does seem to me to push the envelope of an encyclopedic neutral tone, as well as being a potential ambuiguity issue. DeCausa (talk) 19:08, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Disagree with a major premise though accepting of some of what came after it. Regarding "If a name is widely used in reliable sources ...": When sources refer to Muhammad as the Prophet, they aren't doing that because they consider that his name. It isn't like writing "Bill Clinton" for William Jefferson Clinton.

If other sources are doing it out of reverence, well, we're not doing that here. If it's because they're following a style guide that says to do that, well, we have our own style guide that says not to. Of course, disambiguation in context is fine, just as in articles where we normally refer to the subject by family name, we will still switch to the first name in passages where other members of the subject's family having the same family name are being discussed. But, even then, lower-case "prophet", as in the proposal. Largoplazo (talk) 19:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

DeCausa and Largoplazo, thanks for your feedback! I think it's safe to say that publishers like Brill [25][26], Cambridge University Press [[27]][28], or scholars like Hoyland [29] are not doing this out of reverence. If they do it because of their style guides, a strong reason would be required for us to do things differently, not to do them similarly. The NPOV principle of neutrally following RS of course primarily applies to the POVs expressed in RS, but also to many other things. Some of these things are explicitly mentioned in WP:NPOV (e.g. names commonly used by RS, as in my quotation from WP:POVNAME above), while others are not explicitly mentioned (e.g. epithets commonly used by RS, "the prophet" indeed not a being a proper name, though like all common epithets it is functionally equivalent to a proper name). Still, in most cases the principle holds. If someone believes the general principle of neutrally following RS does not hold in this case, I think they ought to explain why.

Obviously, someone insisting that we use "the prophet Muhammad" throughout an article could and should be opposed on purely stylistic grounds. The fact that it would theoretically be allowed by MOS:ISLAMHON does not mean that MOS:ISLAMHON would prescribe it. This is not what MOS:ISLAMHON is for. In the main, MOS:ISLAMHON is an interpretation of NPOV as applied to Islamic terminology: it determines which terminology is generally regarded as non-neutral and which is regarded as neutral. Editors should be looking at RS to determine this. Using "the prophet" may seem non-neutral, perhaps even more so than "the prophet Muhammad" (it shouldn't normally be ambiguous, by the way, because it's used as a shorthand for "the prophet Muhammad" in second mentions), but this notion should be effectively dispelled by the fact that it is regularly used by RS ([30][31][32][33][34] all use "the prophet" in this way).

In general, I think that rather than starting from the preconceived notions that we as editors may have, or from the norms set by the current guideline (which may both influence and be influenced by these preconceptions), we should start from looking at the usage in RS. There may be reasons for us to deviate from that usage in RS, to be effectively non-neutral as NPOV uses that term, but these reasons should be set out and argued for. Simply stating that doing exactly what RS do is not neutral enough should be a non-starter. At the very least, it should be specified what standard of neutrality apart from NPOV is being used (e.g., Doug seems to be hinting at such a standard below), and why that standard is more important than NPOV.

I'm sorry to be bludgeoning this a bit, but I believe this clarification may be helpful. For those who only partially agree, please consider formulating an alternative text. I'm sure there will be something we can agree on. Thanks! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The strong reason not to follow other style guides is our goal of internal consistency. Other guides may choose, in their writings about different subjects in different contexts, to follow the respective practices of the communities particular to those contexts, without regard to the appearance that that then gives that they treat certain religious figures with a level of honor not accorded to their other religious figures or non-religious figures. If Muslims refer to Muhammad as "The Prophet" while Jews don't refer to Moses as "The Prophet", Wikipedia should not be calling Muhammad "The Prophet" while calling Moses only "Moses", giving the impression that Wikipedia holds Muhammad in higher regard.

I can't think of any secular reason why anybody would find it a problem just to refer to Muhammad as "Muhammad". Largoplazo (talk) 22:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC) Largoplazo (talk) 22:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Agree - I think the best approach here is to avoid using it most of the time but not have a rigid exclusion of the phrase as non-neutral. In this context it is like saying "the founder of Islam" for disambiguation, and any halfway intelligent reader will not read it as an endorsement of a religious claim. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 19:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Although I understand the argument above, how I’d this issue different in principle to calling Jesus either Christ or Jesus Christ? Both affirm his deity, while just Jesus or Jesus of Nazareth does not, per MOS:JESUS. Using “Prophet” acknowledges that he was indeed a prophet. Doug Weller talk 20:48, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Hi Doug, I'm not sure whether it actually is different in principle, I even suspect that it is not, but it is different with respect to usage in RS (I suppose RS do not normally refer to Jesus as "Jesus Christ" or "Christ"?). Now RS do have good reasons for this common usage, which are specific to Muhammad and would not translate to the case of Jesus, mainly revolving as they do around disambiguation and style (as I've tried to explain above). It may be true that RS on Islam consider the principle of not appearing to acknowledge prophethood/divinity less important than clarity and unencumbered style. Doubtlessly RS are also adopting each other's usage, and referring to Muhammad as "the prophet" may simply be something of a scholarly tradition.

  As also pointed out by Iskandar323 above though, insisting on using only "Muhammad" really does lead to clunky prose, so the question is rather why Islamicists did not develop a more secular-sounding alternative (there is no equivalent to "Jesus of Nazareth" for Muhammad, but they could have used Muhammad ibn Abd Allah). The question for us, on the other hand, is whether to follow RS, or to continue using our Wikipedia-only and rather clunky alternative of using only "Muhammad". Good reasons to go against RS are needed. Do you think that a principle of using secular-sounding terminology across the board would provide such a reason? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• A reasonable solution to solve the commonplace ambiguity issue. Support. Albertatiran (talk) 22:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as unnecessary. If the writing becomes clunky, or in those instances were Muhammad is ambiguous, then just use Islamic prophet Muhammad or Muhammad, the prophet of Islam to clarify. Wikipedia has its own (manual of) style, so the sources or other style guides using 'prophet Muhammad' aren't really that relevant here. This seems more like a style issue rather than a WP:NPOV issue; but if it were a NPOV issue, then using 'prophet Muhammad' violates NPOV (see MOS:JESUS, for example, as linked by another editor above: Many articles refer to Jesus Christ; the word "Christ" is a formal title, used by those people who believe that Jesus is the son of God and the messiah. This usage violates Wikipedia policy, and it never hurts to remind editors to refer to him as "Jesus of Nazareth" or simply "Jesus." Some1 (talk) 23:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Were there so many Jesuses around in either Jesus' time, or subsequently in Christian historiography, that ambiguity regularly crops up? I suspect the problem is somewhat diminished in this case, and the case for options less wanting. "Christ" is also far more of a proper name and a title than "prophet", which is a far more generic designation. There are hundreds of religious figures named prophets in history; only a handful of messiahs. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:50, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  I think a lot of us would object to "Christ" ('The Anointed One') as another non-neutral honorific.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:57, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think I suggested otherwise. My point was that "upper-case "Christ" (a proper name) and lower-case "prophet" are not terms on the same level or especially comparable. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:10, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  The upper-case "Christ" is not a proper name... Its not the dude's last name. Have you perhaps been misled by the expression Jesus H. Christ and associated? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• "Reliable sources (RS) very commonly use ... 'the Prophet' to refer to Muhammad" simply isn't true of sources that aren't Muslim ones (i.e., sources independent of the subject). We have MOS:DOCTCAPS and related rules for a reason. It is arguably reasonble to, in particular contexts, refer to "the prophet Muhammad", when there's some need to make it clear that we're talking about someone filling a prophet role, but we should never do this in an honorific fashion because doing so by definition is not WP:NPOV. I'm not opposed to adding some clarifying wording about this, but it has to be consistent with DOCTCAPS and the rest of MoS, and the NPOV basis for those rules in the first place. I'm not sure either sets of proposed wording above are really doing the trick, but am open to additional wordsmithing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe somethign like: Muhammad: Do not use an honorific "the Prophet" or "[the] Holy Prophet" (whether capitalized like this or not) in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad". Simply use "Muhammad". In a context where explanatory wording is necessary, he can be referred to, at first occurrence, as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" or simply "the prophet Muhammad" if the Islamic context is already clear. Similarly, do not apply honorifics to names of imams, Jesus (Isa is Islam), or other figures.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC); revised based on feedback below. 07:38, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  "In the above, as I've mentioned above, I'm not sure why it should be stylistically mandated that "Islamic" be used before "prophet Muhammad"; this would likely introduce a lot of needles redundancy on pages about obviously Islamic subjects, and, as a parallel, imagine how clunky it would be to always have to use "Hebrew/Israelite prophet" when introducing the likes of Jeremiah or Isaiah in prose. Again, context provides. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:05, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Sure; revised.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:38, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Apaugasma has provided numerous RS above to support his point, so the first point here seems like quite a hollow rebuttal here. On the contrary, it is incredibly easy to find RS with a far more liberal stylistic approach than is used here. Britannica likewise has no qualms about alternating between terms in its prose, and this is hardly surprising, as this is very much how the literature proceeds, so it is very much WP:NPOV. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  You can keep asserting circularly that it "is never my WP:NPOV", but you're not getting much agreement. And Brtiannica's house style is not our house style, or we would not have an MoS, we would just refer to theirs. We don't care what some other publication chooses to do, because their policies are not our policies. WP takes neutrality more seriously than other encyclopedias. And the fact that a few examples or poor writing can be found "in the wild" (cf. WP:CHERRYPICKING) doesn't make it a norm in offsite, non-Muslim writing (nor, for that matter, is it likely to be provable that the writers in question are/were not Muslims choosing to use the honorific for faith-based reasons).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:40, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  SMcCandlish, you're simply dead wrong about this. Please see my comment below. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:26, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yet another circular assertion. Just repeating youself and recycling the same evidence we've already seen is the fallacy of proof by assertion AKA argument from repetition. The same argument and evidence has not been convincing to other editors so far, so just regurgitating it isn't going to change any minds.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:20, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  It's true that if one amount of evidence ("a few examples or poor writing") doesn't matter, perhaps no amount will, though your wording suggested to me that you would have liked more and better evidence. Meanwhile, if you are going to stick to your position (i.e., that using "the prophet Muhammad" is not the norm in offsite, non-Muslim writing) in the face of any and all evidence against it, while coming up with no evidence in favor of it, that position seems to be rather baseless. Please consider trying to prove your assertion by citing offsite, non-Muslim writing which does not use "the prophet Muhammad". If it's not the norm, it should be easy to find, and I'm really, genuinely curious about what you could come up with. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• The sources I cited above are a purely random selection of authoritative sources (Brill, Cambridge University Press, Encyclopaedia of Islam), and the fact of the matter is that all high-quality reliable sources regularly refer to Muhammad as "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet", as well as simply "Muhammad". The only problem here is that Wikipedia editors are not willing to look at what reliable sources are doing. The notion that this kind of usage is only found in religious Islamic sources is simply an inaccurate preconception.
  I would like to challenge editors here: please cite a high-quality source that does not speak about Muhammad as "the prophet Muhammad", or as "the prophet" as a variation for simply "Muhammad". Let's first establish what actually is NPOV here, because there are far too many editors here who think they know what it is without ever looking at one reliable source.
  Here's another boatload of reliable sources to look at for anyone who is willing: [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Yes, these (as [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] already cited above) were 'selected' in the sense that when looking for sources, I only included academic reliable sources and excluded the many non-independent religious sources which also share this usage. I'm aware of the limitations of this evidence: it shows beyond any shadow of doubt that high-quality RS routinely use "the prophet Muhammad" and "the prophet", but it does not show that the RS which are doing this constitute a majority. That's why I would like editors to come up with RS that avoid using "the prophet Muhammad" and "the prophet". ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:39, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

See above where I explain why it's irrelevant, for multiple reasons, what style other publications choose to use. They have their considerations and we have ours. It doesn't matter if you find 5,000 sources that never, ever, ever, simply refer to him as "Muhammad", but, instead, always as "The Prophet" or "the Prophet Muhammad" or "Muhammad PBUH" (because we also had that discussion here), because, whether they do so out of devotion, or because they give priority to repeating what they see in their sources over neutrality across their own writings, our considerations are ours, and we need take only those into account. Largoplazo (talk) 18:01, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

If you think NPOV has nothing to do with this and should be disregarded, that's fine. The challenge here is to establish what NPOV is (assuming it's understood that Wikipedia's 'neutral' means 'not different from what is found in RS'), for those who do think it's relevant. Perhaps you might want to establish (in a separate comment) what Wikipedia policy our considerations here are based on if not NPOV. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I said nothing that remotely resembles not considering NPOV important. Well, maybe I did. It depends on whether you're playing fast and loose with the Wikipedia meaning of NPOV. My strongly rejecting treatment here of Muhammad as meriting special nomenclature accorded to nobody else mentioned in this entire encyclopedia, regardless of what any other source does, is very much neutral. NPOV here generally refers to neutrality in the gathering of facts from sources and according them due weight. We aren't talking about facts here, we're talking about writing style. When 5,000 sources refer to Muhammad as "the Prophet", that isn't a statement of fact, it's a style. A non-neutral style that we should not be adopting.

As I asked above, does it bother you not to have "the Prophet" all over the place whenever Muhammad's name is mentioned? Regardless of what justifications you give as to why "The Prophet" should be OK to use here, can you come up with a single neutral, secular reason why it's a problem not to, why it isn't OK just to write "Muhammad"? If not, then the clear answer is to stick with what nobody has a problem with (other than for personal devotional reasons) instead of switching to something that many people have a problem with.

It's no different from the fact that we write "God" here and never "G-d", even in articles that are steeped in Orthodox Judaism that cite numerous resources that use "G-d". Largoplazo (talk) 21:50, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

What is "special nomenclature", what is "neutral"? The criteria you seem to be using to answer these questions (loosely, 'we treat all historical religious figures equally, regardless of what reliable sources are doing') appear to have no basis in policy at all, or at the very least have nothing to do with anything said in WP:NPOV. That's why I said you may be of the opinion that NPOV is irrelevant for this particular decision, even though it is clearly not just about style, but rather about a certain conception of neutrality that is not covered by NPOV.

I think SMcCandlish has it right when they say below that the current guideline is based on a consensus process: if a majority of editors agree with a certain set of criteria (like the ones you seem to be using), then our decision will be based upon that, even if these criteria have no basis at all in policy, even if they tend to go against it (the 'regardless of RS' bit). I think it would help enormously if editors would acknowledge that in some decisions they disregard NPOV, and if they would write a new neutrality policy which takes account of some of these common exceptions to NPOV, where we are striving to be neutral in another sense than the one indicated by NPOV.

As for your inquiry above about whether I regard it as a problem to only use "Muhammad", I initially did not respond because I'm probably already writing too much here. The answer is that while there's no problem at all with using simply "Muhammad", and while my proposal leaves that open as a perfectly acceptable option, it's often far from ideal because of the ambiguity and style-related reasons I explained above, and so disallowing the alternatives routinely used by RS does tend to create some problems. The night-and-day difference with expressions like PBUH and G-d is that those are either never or almost never used by RS, and so it would constitute a major breach of NPOV to use them. I'm afraid that the Orthodox Judaism articles you are thinking of are simply not citing reliable, academic, secondary, scholarly sources. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose as WP:CREEP. The original wording "recommends", clearly allowing for exceptions for clarity, which seems to be what this proposal is asking for anyway. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  As it often goes with these things, "recommended action" is de facto taken to mean "policy says" in actual editing (just one recent example [53][54][55][56]). That's why my proposal is explicitly allowing more than the current text does, in line with RS. It is relaxing a rule that was invented by Wikipedia editors and which has no basis at all in RS, which is the very opposite of WP:CREEP. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  In that example, the removal of "the prophet" by UrielAcosta is an improvement. I don't see why the sentence They were named ghulāt by other Shi'i and Sunni Muslims for their purportedly exaggerated veneration of Muhammad... needs the prophet before Muhammed; Muhammad is already wiki-linked and the usage is not ambiguous. Largoplazo's question can you come up with a single neutral, secular reason why it's a problem not to, why it isn't OK just to write "Muhammad"? is a good one. Some1 (talk) 23:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  I answered Largoplazo's question above (my last reply to date under my own 'challenge' comment). Briefly, because it sometimes creates ambiguity- and style-related issues, as I've tried to explain in my earliest comments. But my reply here with regard to the removal of "the prophet" by UrielAcosta in the Ghulat article will also provide a fine of example of why using just "Muhammad" is sometimes suboptimal.

  The first, somewhat trivial reason why adding "the prophet" is better here is that it may not be immediately clear to everyone which Muhammad is meant, or who this Muhammad is supposed to be. It may be hard to imagine this when you already know, but not all readers have the same background knowledge, and such basic clarity is essential in an encyclopedia. Readers are not supposed to have to click on wiki-links to confirm something basic like this: at first mention (and it is indeed a first mention in this case), it should almost always be specified that we are talking about the prophet Muhammad.

  A second, perhaps more substantial reason here is as follows. The fact that the ghulat venerated the prophet is of some significance here, because venerating anything or anyone but God is considered shirk by most Muslims (shirk in turn is considered the single greatest sin in Islam): this dynamic largely defines what the ghulat are. It's also why in the same sentence you quote we are specifying that Ali and his descendants (whom the ghulat also venerated) were the Shi'i Imams, which is another fact many readers will already know about but is still highly relevant to mention. What sets the ghulat apart from other Shi'is is that they tended to divinize the prophet and the Imams.

  No wonder then that the source used here has According to ʿAbd-Allāh b. Ḥarb’s doctrine, the prophet Moḥammad as well as ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb and his descendants, the Imams, were gods (āleha). Now what was the reason not to use the word "prophet" here? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:06, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  That's all easily solved by just adding the word Islamic in front of the word "prophet", which MOS:MUHAMMAD already currently advises doing: recommended action is to simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary. (emphasis mine). Some1 (talk) 00:28, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, except that "Islamic" would be redundant here (as it often is, as others in this discussion have also remarked). Rather than appealing to the letter of the guideline and adding something suboptimal I opened up a talk page discussion, with much of the substantial reasoning given above. Still, UrielAcosta could still appeal to the letter of the guideline (as they appeared to do in their revert) and insist that whatever the source says, it is not allowed per MOS:PBUH. I would really prefer not to have to go through such hassles at all (this is not the first time!), and I also believe it would be highly perplexing and frustrating to other actual academics specializing in Islam who would try to write something here. That's why I came here. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  It might be "redundant", but as you stated before: "not all readers have the same background knowledge, and such basic clarity is essential in an encyclopedia". Some1 (talk) 01:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  But in the same sentence as Sunnis and Shias are mentioned? And where the subject has already been defined as being about Muslims? That seems wholly redundant. And why actively require this? It's clunky and an actually much better example of WP:CREEP, i.e. having a style guide dictating what editors could better steer by themselves. Iskandar323 (talk) 03:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  If readers know about Sunnis and Shias (and that the "subject has already been defined as being about Muslims") then I'm sure they know about Muhammad (I'm sure more readers know about Muhammad than the two denominations of Islam), so adding the two words the prophet before Muhammad (when Muhammad is already wiki-linked) isn't providing any additional "clarity". On the other hand, if readers don't know much about Sunnis and Shias/the ghulat/everything Apaugasma wrote in the third paragraph as the second reason for adding 'the prophet' above, then adding Islamic prophet Muhammad is going to help readers. 'Clunky' or 'redundant' are subjective. Some1 (talk) 12:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well I wouldn't mind at all to have a discussion about that in any specific article under the circumstances where –as in what I am aiming for– MOS:MUHAMMAD wouldn't be constraining us to do anything in any way. The problem at hand is that it currently leaves only two options open ("Muhammad" or "the Islamic prophet Muhammad") where there is at least one other, extremely often used option ("the prophet Muhammad") that is for some reason verboten.

  I think this discussion nicely illustrates why my efforts here are very much meant to go against WP:CREEP. Ask yourself: would you or UrielAcosta have come to the Ghulat article to change "the prophet Muhammad" to "Muhammad" or "the Islamic prophet Muhammad", if it weren't for MOS:MUHAMMAD instructing editors what is allowed recommended and what is not? See Special:Contributions/UrielAcosta: 'fixing' stuff per MOS:MUHAMMAD (aka MOS:PBUH) is one of their main activities. I don't blame them, mind you; I blame the guideline. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  "recommended action" is de facto taken to mean "policy says" in actual editing (just one recent example) No Apaugasma, that is where "recommended action" is de facto taken to mean "recommended action"; UrielAcosta explicitly and correctly allows for clear common-sense exceptions, but this is not one of them. There is no increased clarity in adding "the prophet". And no, a proposal prescribing permitted use (using an imperative, no less!) is most certainly not relaxing a recommendation you believe to be taken as policy. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:04, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  As I've explained just above in my replies to Some1, there is increased clarity, and it's highly relevant here in context (which perhaps requires some subject expertise, but read my explanation above). The very source cited uses it (I quoted it above). Yet you yourself now seem to argue that "recommended action" means this simply must be done in this case, no discussion warranted or needed? If the common-sense of editors who know nothing about the subject does not immediately see why it should be there, it must automatically be removed?

  Well, in my experience, that's much too strict, there's no policy-based rationale (outside MOS:MUHAMMAD itself) for it in the first place, and it leads to countless removals (even re-reverts, such as here) where it is actually very much appropriate to use it. Nota bene for something the whole aggregate of RS are doing as a matter of routine (I'm going to post another survey of randomly selected top scholars each last one of them routinely using "the Prophet" as a general reference to Muhammad below).

  My proposal is meant to be more relaxed than the current text, in the sense that it is aiming to allow more and to disallow less (I think it does), but it seems that's not what you would prefer? If you're for relaxing the rule, please formulate a text of your own, that would be highly helpful! If you're against relaxing the rule, WP:CREEP is simply not the right argument. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:45, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• What is a Not Reliable Source? It's simple. Whenever a source writes "Joseon Dynasty" instead of Joseon Kingdom, or simply Joseon, that source is a Not Reliable Source. All these respectable scholars are most than often rückgratlos, as described in the famous slip of tongue quoted by Sigmund Freud. The historical Muhammad was a remarkable organizer and head of State. No less, no more. Our ways of speaking about him must reflect this fact. Pldx1 (talk) 21:19, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well, it might be more precise to say that sources that happen to use some wording we might consider sort of aggrandizing are not necessarily "unreliable"; they might actually be very well-researched and respected when it comes to factual matters. They're simply not reliable for how Wikipedia should write encyclopedic prose for our particular audience. The sort of argument above that because some sources (even a whole bunch of them) "popularly" like to use certain wording means magically that Wikipedia "must" also use that wording is completely bogus reasoning, known as the common-style fallacy. No external sources dictate how Wikipedia has to write. Only we determine that, through a consensus process that takes such sources into consideration but is not controlled by them like a puppet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:28, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  @Pldx1: are you saying that sources which use "the prophet Muhammad" are Not Reliable Source? That would clash kind of unfortunately with the fact that nearly all sources which WP:RS currently regards as reliable sources (independent, secondary, scholarly sources) do use "the prophet Muhammad". It would mean that the great majority of sources listed at Mu'awiya I#Bibliography would be Not Reliable Source, and that both that article and all other FA's we have on Islamic topics would need to be demoted and stripped, because they are largely based on Not Reliable Sources.

  Rather, an approach like the one suggested by SMcCandlish and some others above would seem to be in order: these sources are reliable, but we are choosing of our own accord to not do what they do. In some decisions, we entirely disregard NPOV and base our guidelines instead on editorial consensus. I think that last sentence at least reflects what often happens on Wikipedia, though I would like it so much better (even though I'd still disagree with it) if it were also openly acknowledged. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• MOS:GOD says we use capital letters: the Prophet. While we use a capital G for the Christian deity, we should also use a capital P for Mohammed's title. Switching to a small P for Mohammed should also trigger a switch to a small G for Yahweh.—S Marshall T/C 22:57, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  what it actually says for anyone wondering is "The same is true when referring to important religious figures, such as Muhammad, by terms such as the Prophet". It actually doesnt say its imperative or acceptable to call him simply "the Prophet", just that when one does, one should capitalize it. It also seems to be referring specifically to the use of "the Prophet" to refer to him without using his name, not that when he is called "the prophet Muhammad". JM2023 (talk) 00:14, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• Agree/Support per proposer's reasoning + others' reasonings in support/agreement. Apaugasma has been working hard to support the change and has provided volumes of sound reasoning. This is a secular encyclopedia. JM2023 (talk) 00:32, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Evidence of usage in RS

From the discussion above I've gathered that not everyone believes that the common usage in reliable sources (RS) is relevant here. However, since the question of allowing "the prophet Muhammad"/"the prophet" in wiki-voice is undeniably a neutrality issue, and since I suspect that most editors share my believe that neutrality on Wikipedia is determined by what RS are saying and doing, I think this discussion warrants a subsection focused on evidence of such RS. Those who do not believe it to be relevant can ignore it, and should perhaps consider opening another subsection focused on determining a different basis for what MOS:MUHAMMAD should say, or what standard of neutrality it should be based on. Those who do believe RS to be relevant to the discussion are highly encouraged to gather evidence. (please, please, please help me out here)

In particular, I would like to dispel the notion that "the prophet Muhammad"/"the prophet" is only used by religious Islamic sources to refer to Muhammad, and establish that it is routinely used in this way by RS. I would also like to review RS about Islamic topics that are not using "the prophet Muhammad"/"the prophet", if such can be found.

I will start, for the sake of completeness and for easy reference, with repeating the links to RS I've already given above showing this usage. I found those by searching Google Scholar and Encyclopaedia of Islam for 'prophet Muhammad'. [57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]

Since there have been concerns about possible cherry-picking (using online search functions, it's hard to find out how RS are referring to Muhammad without looking for 'prophet Muhammad', because that seems to be the only way to find RS that are actually dealing with, well, the prophet Muhammad, as opposed to some other prophet or some other Muhammad?), I decided to take another approach and look at those monographs written by the crème de la crème of historians of Islam which I happen to own, and see what they are doing:

List of sources with limited quotes

Cook, Michael (2014). Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective. Princeton University Press. P. 13 "Thus the tenth-­century philosopher Abū ʾl-­Ḥasan al-­ʿĀmirī, in a work in praise of Islam, emphasized that thanks to their ethnic tie (al-­nisba al-­jinsiyya) to the Prophet even those Arabs—­the majority of them—­who had remained in their homeland at the time of the conquests had been honored by the fact that Islam could be called “the religion of the Arabs” (dīn al-­ʿArab) and the resulting state their kingdom (mulk al-­ʿArab)." p. 94 "The text to which the article is devoted is a seventeenth-­century Tamil life of the Prophet Muḥammad whose title combines two literary terms, the Muslim sīra and the Hindu purāṇa." Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity. Cambridge University Press. P. 4: "The work is late: written not by a grandchild, but a great-grandchild of the Prophet's generation, it gives us the view for which classical Islam had settled." Donner, Fred (2010). Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Harvard University Press. P. xi: "The notions that the prophet Muhammad (died 632 C.E.) and his followers were motivated mainly by factors other than religion, and that the Umayyad family, which ruled from 661 to 750, were fundamentally hostile to the essence of Muhammad's movement, is even today widespread in Western scholarship." P. 41 "Others included 'Uthman ibn 'Affan, a very wealthy member of the powerful clan of Umayya, whose generosity was often put at the prophet's service and who married the prophet’s daughters Ruqayya and (after the former's death) Umm Kulthum; [...]" Hoyland, Robert G. (2015). In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press. P. 1 "But when one turns to Muslim accounts to read about the post-630 world, then it appears that the prophet Muhammad’s preaching was carried at breakneck speed from its birthplace in west Arabia across the whole Middle East by Arab soldiers [...]" p. 45 "Both were from the prophet’s tribe of Quraysh, but whereas the former was from a clan that long opposed Muhammad, Abu ‘Ubayda had been a close companion of the prophet from the very start of his mission." Kennedy, Hugh N. (2016). The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century (3rd ed.). Routledge. P. xiii "This work is intended as an introduction to the history of the Near East in the early Islamic period, from the time of the Prophet to the vast upheaval caused by the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the mid-fifth to eleventh centuries." P. 19 "However, it was neither a nomad community nor an agricultural community which produced the Prophet Muhammad." Lewis, Bernard (1993). The Arabs in History. Oxford University Press. P. 31 "It was in this milieu that Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was born." P. 32 "When the problems of governing a vast empire brought the Arabs face to face with all kinds of difficulties which had never arisen during the lifetime of the Prophet, the principle was established that not only the Qur'́ān itself, the word of God, was authoritative as a guide to conduct, but also the entire practice and utterances of the Prophet throughout his lifetime." Madelung, Wilferd (1997). The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge University Press. P. 1 "No event in history has divided Islam more profoundly and durably than the succession to Muhammad. The right to occupy the Prophet's place at the head of the Muslim community after his death became a question of great religious weight which has separated Sunnites and Shi'ites until the present." P. i (abstract) "In a comprehensive and original study of the early history of Islam, Wilferd Madelung describes the conflict that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, between his family, Hashim, and his tribe, Quraysh, for the leadership of the Muslim community." Stroumsa, Sarah (1999). Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rāwandī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought. Brill. P. 8 "Rather, it was the very message of Islam, its very foundations -The Qur'an and the Prophet- which they rejected." P. 14 "We would also have to take into account cases like the mu'tazilite leader Thumama b. al-Asras, to whom Baghdadi attributed deprecating remarks about the Prophet." P. 41 "Much in our sources points to some Shi'i sympathies, at least in some part of al-Warraq's life; and yet he is said not only to have spoken derisively of the Prophet Muhammad, but also to have expressed particular animosity to 'Ali because of the blood he had spilled."

Not unexpectedly from my perspective, most of them used the expression "the prophet Muhammad" (Donner 2010, Hoyland 2015) or "the Prophet Muhammad" (Cook 2014, Kennedy 2016, Madelung 1997, Stroumsa 1999), and all of them routinely used "the prophet" (Donner 2010, Hoyland 2015) or "the Prophet" (Cook 2014, Crone 1980, Kennedy 2016, Lewis 1993, Madelung 1997, Stroumsa 1999) to refer to Muhammad. What was perhaps somewhat less expected was that for both expressions, the capitalized version occurred more often, and that use of simply "the Prophet"/"the prophet" was even more widespread than "the Prophet Muhammad", with all surveyed sources using it.

Please keep in mind that these are absolutely top scholars, publishing with top publishing houses (they all have wiki articles which can be checked for that). Despite the fact that I found no RS not using "the prophet Muhammad"/"the prophet", I would still be highly interested to review such sources if other editors can find them. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 03:38, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Can you explain why you see using "the Islamic prophet Muhammed" over "the prophet Muhammed"/"the prophet" as an NPOV issue? I can envisage arguments for it being an NPOV issue in the opposite direction, but in this direction it seems analogues to using "boot" instead of "trunk". BilledMammal (talk) 04:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi BilledMammal! The neutrality issue is whether to use the word "prophet" at all before Muhammad's name, and whether to use "the prophet" as a bare reference to him. I'm trying to dispel the wiki-myth that these usages are religious in nature and therefore 'non-neutral'. At the very least I want to show that the simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" is using the term "NPOV" improperly, since NPOV is about being neutral towards RS, and RS all (without exception, it seems) use "the prophet Muhammad", "the prophet", or (most often) both. Whether to use "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" instead of these is a purely stylistic issue. I guess that my first proposal did not make that entirely clear, which is why I would like to workshop a new proposal in the subsection below. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

To generalize this a little, I disagree that when it comes to nomenclature we can copy the most common terminology in reliable sources and always get an NPOV-compliant name. For example, consider Ivan the Terrible. Reliable sources consistently use that name for him - but reliable sources also agree that this name is not neutral, and that due to the changing definition of the word "terrible" it no longer reflects how he was perceived at the time or his behavior as a leader.

When it comes to what to call someone, reliable sources have concerns beyond neutrality, such as recognizably and conciseness. We shouldn't feel obligated to copy them, and copying them doesn't mean that there isn't an NPOV issue. BilledMammal (talk) 16:12, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Workshop proposal

One of the problems above seems to be that I took a badly worded text, and carved an even badlier worded proposal out of that. Please also take into account that English is not my native language; I can use all the help I can get. There have been concerns about WP:CREEP, and indeed I believe that the old text was too complex and too constraining, so it's probably a good idea to workshop a new proposal.

Given the evidence above of common usage in RS I believe the only expression that is actually problematic is "Holy Prophet", and we should mainly have something advising against that. Apart from this, the expression "the prophet" can carry religious overtones if overused or used entirely instead of "Muhammad" or "the prophet Muhammad", so I believe it's prudent to advise editors only to use "the prophet" as a variation on the other two expressions (as it is actually done in RS). This would yield something like:

Holy Prophet in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad" — recommended action is to use just "Muhammad", or neutral and lowercase expressions such as "the prophet" or "the prophet Muhammad". Use of "the prophet" should generally occur as a variation on "Muhammad" or "the prophet Muhammad".

However, given the fact that capitalized "Prophet" was predominant in the RS evidence above, and since MOS:GOD is already advising to use a capital for the standalone expression "the Prophet", we might also consider the following option:

Holy Prophet in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad" — recommended action is to use just "Muhammad", or neutral expressions such as "the Prophet" or "the Prophet Muhammad". Use of "the Prophet" should generally occur as a variation on "Muhammad" or "the Prophet Muhammad".

What do you think? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I would oppose this, largely per my comment above. "the Prophet" has NPOV issues in that it advances the point of view that he was the Prophet; the final one. From an Islamic perspective that is true, but from a secular and neutral perspective he is just a prophet. "the prophet Muhammad" moderates those issues slightly, but even there I believe the status quo is more neutral. BilledMammal (talk) 16:21, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

My reply continues to be that reliable sources are irrelevant because our editorial concerns aren't theirs. If you want to include a proviso only for disambiguation purposes, then it can allow "'the prophet" or 'the prophet Muhammad' in cases comparable to a passage about a piano player Smith and also Smith's same-surnamed spouse that might need to refer to the former as 'the piano player' to avoid ambiguity. And never 'Prophet' with a capital P." Largoplazo (talk) 16:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to allow Prophet Muhammad on first use and possibly the Prophet on subsequent uses in articles dealing with Islam or the Islamic world where he is not the central focus or where there are multiple people called Muhammad mentioned in the article. It is a bit like using the Buddha instead of Siddhartha Gautama. Or Saint Peter instead of some other phrase if Peter alone would be confusing. Note I would use a capital letter for Prophet as that is a title given by others (not wikipedia) while a lower case letter makes it a descriptive adjective, or noun, so saying he is a prophet. Erp (talk) 16:38, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Here is the status quo for reference:

The Prophet or (The) Holy Prophet (including with a lowercase 'h') in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad"; or just Prophet preceding "Muhammad" — recommended action is to simplify and NPOV to just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary.

I think the status quo is fine and neutral as is. But if we were to allow the usage of the "[P]rophet Muhammad" outside of the first reference, I'd suggest:

(The) Holy Prophet in place of, or preceding, "Muhammad" — recommended action is to use just "Muhammad" except when it is the first reference in an article, or the first reference in the lead, in which case it may be rendered as "the Islamic prophet Muhammad" if necessary. In cases where ambiguity or confusion exists, the "Prophet Muhammad" or "the Prophet" may be used as a variation on "Muhammad".

I agree with Erp regarding the capital P. 'Prophet Muhammad' is more of a name, 'prophet Muhammad' implies that he's actually a prophet. Some1 (talk) 17:39, 23 September 2023 (UTC)