Talk:Unbelief

Disambiguation

The purpose of a disambiguation page is "to help a reader find the right Wikipedia article when different topics could be referred to by the same search term" (MOS:DAB). What might a person discussing "unbelief" or searching for "unbelief" be looking for?

Unbelief is an emotion, a high-intensity variant of startlement-surprise, eg. in the Emotion classification article. Other scholars refer to the same concept under the term "incredulity", eg.

• Turner, Jonathan H. (1999). "Toward a General Sociological Theory of Emotions". Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 29 (2): 133–161. doi:10.1111/1468-5914.00095. ISSN 0021-8308.
• Scheffler, Israel (1977). "In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions". Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education. 79 (2): 1–10. doi:10.1177/016146817707900207. ISSN 0161-4681.

In an Islamic context, the word "unbelief" invariably refers to the concept of Kufr. In a Christian context, it often refers to the concept of faith. Both of these are related to the concept of "belief", but at times they may be unrelated to belief.

When Muslims talk of the "order of unbelief", this has nothing to do with anyone's acceptance or rejection of propositional truth claims. Sentences like "Contemporary Salafism continues to regard the belief in angels as a pillar of Islam and regards the rejection of the literal belief in angels as unbelief" in Angels in Islam#In Salafism become nonsensical if "unbelief" is about belief. "As for the sultans, they are undoubtedly unbelievers, even though they may profess the religion of Islam, because they practice polytheistic rituals and turn people away from the path of God and raise the flag of a worldly kingdom above the banner of Islam. All this is unbelief according to the consensus of opinions" (Usman dan Fodio) Again, nothing here about rejecting a propositional truth claim. These quotes are not about belief, but about Kufr.

For a Christian example, the passage quoted at Frau Holle#Origins and attestations prescribes a penance for those who have "have performed participation in this unbelief". I'm not quite sure if the "unbelief" is believing in the legends of Holda or actually claiming to have ridden on beasts with Holda's entourage, but in either case, it is clear that unbelief is not rejecting a propositional claim. Rather, it is heresy, engaging in religiously forbidden acts or beliefs, violating group norms, crossing group identity markers.

Even in cases when people are talking about something related to rejection of a truth claim, I don't think Belief is always the best target. When Roger Scruton complains of modern "conditions of fragmentation, heresy, and unbelief", he isn't saying that people don't affirm any propositions, but is referring to some religious propositions. A reader looking for the subject of his statement would be well-directed to be pointed to Irreligion, Apostasy, Atheism, or Secularization.

@Bkonrad: Please restore this to a disambiguation page. Daask (talk) 21:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but what you describe above is a sort of similarity in meaning, or semantic ambiguity, while disambiguation pages are for a more literal lexical ambiguity in titles. While what you describe in your edits might be considered as types of unbelief, none of the articles would be titled as unbelief. It might be possible to write a broad concept article for this group of topics, these would not be appropriate as a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 23:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, would be a bad use of disambiguation. When you describe this many related ways "unbelief" can be used, you lay the foundation for its own article. Hyperbolick (talk) 08:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC)