Talk:Succession to Muhammad/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 19:09, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Just a heads up, I posted a notice at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Islam#Requesting_outside_input_on_succession_to_Muhammad to request additional feedback on whether this article is neutral or not. --Cerebellum (talk) 15:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   Prose looks good, follows MoS WP:MOSISLAM close enough.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

   See below, just a couple reference issues.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   In my opinion, does not comply with WP:NPOV.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   See below, I'd like another image.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   I'm gonna place this article on hold until the issues below are resolved. I'm worried that the article tilts too much to the Shia side. I don't know too much about this topic, but reading it I get the overwhelming impression that Ali should have been Muhammad's successor, and that Western scholars pretty much agree with that. Maybe that's the case, but if not please try to better represent the Sunni view. I know I'm being vague, the comments below have my specific concerns. See User talk:Snowsky Mountain. The author requested to withdraw the nomination, unfortunately by the time I saw the request I had already conducted the review. I am therefore closing the review. --Cerebellum (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Comments

• Lead: The last sentence says there are "many other opinions" about the succession, but unless I'm missing something the article only covers the Shia and Sunni views. Please either remove that sentence or add the other views.
• Images: I'd like to see at least one more image, there's plenty of space for it before the Saqifah one. Can you think of anything that would be appropriate?
• Historiography: The sentence about Leone Caetani falls under GA criterion #2.b (published opinion), so it needs a citation.
• Feast of Dhul Asheera: Consider removing the Burton quote, I'm not sure what it adds besides a rhetorical emphasis on Ali's importance.
• Expedition of Usama bin Zayd: I would remove the clause beginning with despite Muhammad's teachings, it strikes me as unnecessary and almost religious in tone, like Wikipedia is taking Muhammad's side. It's also weakly referenced (no page numbers).
• Saqifah: The phrase violent and possibly bloody recurs here in two successive sentences, consider revising.
• Position of Ali: I think we should qualify the claim that Ali was born in the Kaaba, as far as I can tell academic sources tend to say something like "Many sources record" that he was born there ([1]).
• Ali in the Quran: This verse tells Muhammad to announce Ali as his successor at the event of Ghadir Khumm - need a source for this controversial claim.
• Length: The "Shia view" section is about 1200 words long. The "Sunni view" section has about 700 words. Why such a disparity?
• Sunni view: The statement believe Muhammad did not make 120,000 people wait in the desert for three days only to tell them to support Ali seems a little tendentious to me and I couldn't find it in the cited source (#111), please either remove it or provide another source.
• Sunni view: This section doesn't really explain why Sunnis believe Abu Bakr was the rightful caliph. What sort of arguments do they use? Are there any hadiths or Quranic verses they cite?
• Attitude towards Ali: This strikes me as biased; what about the Umayyad tradition of cursing Ali? I don't have any sources to back me up, but I find it hard to believe that no Sunnis have anything bad to say about Ali.
• Western academic views: Every scholar mentioned here seems to support the Shia view. Is that really representative of all scholars? Seems tendentious.
• Citations: There are a few citation errors, please take a look at them. Reference #99 also has a "full citation needed" tag. --Cerebellum (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2019 (UTC)