Talk:Islam

Synkretism, Shamanism and Folklore?

Hello fellow Wikipedians, Do you think we should make a section about the impact of shamanistic and animistic beliefs integrated into Islamic thought, as we encounter it among Turkic people (especially since Turkic people had huge impact on Islam's spread) and India people? I guess the Folkloric Aspect of Islams should not be underestimated, but I also hesitate because I would not like to overemphasize it. Further it is harder to summarize spiritual aspects of a belief system adequately than to do it with written aspects of a religion. But we could write about its development, giving an otherview about which traditions met, and how they influenced each other. The history section already contains partly aspects, which might be to extensive for the history section, but could be integrated to a "Islamized shamanism" section. I would suggest to make the "Mysticism"-section a broader section with Sufism, Ismailism and Shamanism as subsections (Sufism often affected Shamanistic ideas). I would not add it to the denomination, since it is no denomination, often such "Shamanized" Muslims identify as Sunnis, sometimes also as Shias, but this les likely.--VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 13:39, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Lead sentence

Bbx118, regarding your edit, what is grammatically incorrect about the lead sentence: "Islam is an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion teaching that there is only one God (Allah), and that Muhammad is a messenger of God"? – Wallyfromdilbert (talk) 19:24, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

If I may, it's probably because monotheistic already means that they only have one God, so it wouldn't be necessary to say so again.--Yhdwww (talk) 10:23, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Islam did not start from Muhammed,(peace be upon him) lack of Muslim viewpoint in this article and very one sided

The whole point of this wiki page is to inform people about Islam, right? To inform people about Islam, then you have to use the viewpoint of Islam wherever possible. I understand that in places, there will have to be neutral point of view and I don't expect you to put peace be upon him on every mention of of the Prophet Muhammed, (except in my example here, peace be upon him!) but to if your asking Muslims when Islam started, it from the prophet Adam, peace be upon him.

When you say that Islam started from Muhammed, you are giving a a opinionated view. This is where the balance is wrong. In other words, it could be the difference between Muslims believe there is only one and almighty God, this is factual and neutral, to say that there is only one and almighty god would be wrong for article neutrality.

But there are some cases were, if your asking Muslims and Islam, you have to be opinionated to be factually correct to refer to Islam and Muslims, otherwise your not talking about Islam.

Marccarran (talk) 18:17, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Marccarran the article says in the lead section that "Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus".--SharabSalam (talk) 18:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

But what about this bit? Aside from the theological narrative,[20][21][22] Islam is historically believed to have originated in the early 7th century CE in Mecca,[23] and by the 8th century the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east.

What your describing is that the prophets shared the same message, but the above is saying it started from Muhammed. So the two contradict each other.

"The whole point of this wiki page is to inform people about Islam, right?" Not entirely correct. It is about informing about Islam according to research. It is an encyclopedia, not an Islam-Blog, thus not writing form inside. It is Descriptive not introducing. To be fair, Wikipedia explains both the Islamic viewpoint, and the point of research. Maybe in 50 years we will have a line like "According to academical research, the much older Islamic viewpoint had been proven right and Islam is indeed older than Christianty and any other religion, but due to lack of knowledge and evidence among researchers, ignored over centuries." Or otherwise we will just keep describing the different points of view as accurate as possible (in accordance with the viewpoints, not only Islam, neither only Non-Islamic.--VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

As I've said before, this comes down to the fact that English (and European languages in general) uses the term "Islam" specifically to refer to the movement that began with Muhammad. Muslims see this movement as a revitalization of a pre-existing thing, but non-Muslims do not characterize it that way. The prophets before Muhammad are not thought of by non-Muslims as being "Muslim" or teaching "Islam". To a Christian or Jew the idea of Jesus or Abraham being Muslims is simply non-sensical. Basically the original Arabic word and the English word have different definitions and it makes no sense to read English texts using Arabic definitions.--Khajidha (talk) 17:01, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm neither an academic nor a Muslim and I'm not particularly familiar with the history of Islam, but that point looks like it could stand having some attention paid to it. This article does seem to include this info in the second paragraph of the lead which begins, "Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, ...". However the third paragraph seemingly contradicts this with the view you disparage, saying "Islam is historically believed to have originated in the early 7th century CE in Mecca, ...". The Muhammad article seems to have greater problems, saying in its lead sentence that Muhammed was "was an Arab religious, social and political leader and the founder of Islam." The supporting source cited there qualifies that by disclaiming "From a modern, historical perspective, ...", and the cite echoes that it a quote, but that qualification didn't make it into the lead sentence assertion. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:44, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Spelling of Shahada/Shahadah

Should the spelling of Shahadah in this article be changed to Shahada, in line with that article's style? For cohesion, maybe with a note on variant spellings? Or is it better to just leave as it is? Kormachameleon (talk) 16:41, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Opening paragraph seems very biased

Presenting as if Islam contained all other religions and it is the "last word".