This article was nominated for deletion on 28 August 2023. The result of the discussion was keep.
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@BrigadierG: I've removed the Observer comment quote. Establishing facts with comments is generally bad practice, and here it's a quote potentially take out of context and solely hosted in that particular opinion piece (as reliable sources go). This is not good enough for a BLP. I've checked around the web, and this Observer comment appear to be the only reliable source-hosted instance for the quote, aside from this wordpress, which hosts a video that appears to be the speech the quote is taking from. The date of the speech is unclear, as is the nature of the discourse, which for all we know, could be a highly theoretical discussion about historical practices. However, it's obviously not for us to decide as editors. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:23, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RSOPINION doesn't work like that. It's not an opinion that he said that, it's a statement of fact. You can't use opinion pieces to WP:ASSERT, but you absolutely can use them as factual references if the outlet is high quality enough. The full quote reads:
"In Islam slavery is permissible only through wars. Now, if a man has a woman as his slave he has the right to have intercourse with her. She’s not his wife and she is bought and sold in the market of slavery. When we say this you have to look at the holistic picture. Don’t say that ‘Oh, this is barbaric. How can a man sleep with a woman just because he bought her and then he sells her after a month and isn’t this prostitution?’ No it is not. However, if a person buys a slave woman and he sleeps with her and she becomes pregnant, this is for her sake because the minute she gets pregnant she cannot be sold, and she can’t be inherited and she cannot be given as a gift. Her pregnancy sets her free. So she is now known as the mother of a child. She cannot be sold or dealt with financially. She’s not free. She stills stays with her master and her master owns her and he has to be kind for her but he cannot sell her." BrigadierG (talk) 12:30, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's not even remotely what WP:RSOPINION opinion states. That guideline says that you can use opinion pieces in reliable sources for the views of the author - but here it is a statement of fact about someone else (other than the author), who the author cannot speak on behalf of. Totally unusable in a BLP. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:33, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an opinion that he said this thing, it's a verifiable fact that he said this thing - the only thing I'm using that article for is as the source for a direct quote which we presumably both agree he did in fact say. BrigadierG (talk) 12:49, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How is it a verifiable fact if there is no reliable source for it? Iskandar323 (talk) 13:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A news article is; a comment is not, except for the opinions of the author. Opinion pieces are the last source you want to use to establish facts, except where the author is a subject-matter expert (Catherine Bennett is not). It's just a routine comment. Furthermore, the quote aside, the sentence used to introduce the quote was editorialization. Not even the quote states that Al-Hakeem supports this; in the video that can be found on the uncitable wordpress page, but which appears to be the speech from which the quote has been cut without context, he prefaces all of this by stating: "In Islam...", so even were we to be accurate in quoting this by adding the context (which we can't, because it would be WP:OR to do this without a reliable source stating it), the actual context is him stating his opinion of what the Islamic position is - and then again, in what historical or potentially theoretical context we do not know. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The entirety of the text about Al-Hakeem in that article is:
A former visitor to the UK from Jeddah, Assim Luaman Al-Hakeem, is just one of the respected clerics proposing short-cuts to sex that make Mr Blanc's ambitions (workshop customers might want to note) look feeble. "Now, if a man has a woman as his slave he has the right to have intercourse with her".
I tend to agree that, opinion piece or not, this isn't good enough sourcing for a potentially defamatory claim in a BLP. We don't know from the article where or when Al-Hakeem is supposed to have said this, whether it was potentially taken out of context, or even if they're talking about the same person (probably, but they did spell his name wrong). In the absence of more sources backing it up, I don't think we can include this. – Joe (talk) 14:27, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
