The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) DavidLeighEllis (talk) 02:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism of Muhammad[edit]

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This is an attack page - biographical material which is entirely negative in tone. A one-sided presentation of a topic is contrary to our basic policy of neutrality. Note that the page Praise and veneration of Muhammad has just been deleted on similar grounds and so balance requires us to delete this one too. Andrew D. (talk) 09:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This article is not really a personal attack on him, it seems to be more of a documentation of criticism he received, which I see know problem with. And the attack policy page talks about being unsourced but this has plenty of sources and overall is a decent quality article. Also, the fact that this has existed since 2006 and has never been suggested for deletion should give you a pretty good idea of why it should stay. In the first place, Muhammad has been dead for a really long time and attack policies seem mainly for living people. So, no!--Awesomewiki64 (talk) 15:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep why isn't the nominator including Criticism of Jesus, Criticism of Buddhism, Criticism of the Israeli government, Criticism of atheism &c, in this nomination? Deletion is not a solution to balancing the tone of an article. The solution is intelligent contribution and editing. Perhaps that's not possible for some here. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:22, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As indicated in the nomination, this is related to the recent deletion of a similar page which focussed on praise of Muhammed. The close of that discussion said, "if Criticism of Muhammad is deemed problematic (possibly for some of the same reasons as this one; and there are valid arguments to be made that all "Criticism of ..." articles are inherently non-neutral), then that would have to be discussed in a deletion discussion about that article." The core policy WP:NPOV confirms that such "Criticism of" articles are unacceptable. WP:POVNAMING states "Descriptive titles should be worded neutrally, so as not to suggest a viewpoint for or against a topic, or to confine the content of the article to views on a particular side of an issue (for example, an article titled "Criticisms of X" might be better renamed "Societal views on X"). Neutral titles encourage multiple viewpoints and responsible article writing." So, all these one-side pages should indeed be deleted but a group nomination would be unwieldy and so this is best done one at a time. Andrew D. (talk) 11:35, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that closure was as flawed as this nomination. And it looks like you are misinterpreting the "core policy WP:NPOV" here too. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:58, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per The Rambling Man.4meter4 (talk) 22:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep An entirely legitimate article about a notable topic. The Rambling Man makes an excellent point. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment:. While praise articles are rare, if not non-existent, on Wikipedia (try searching for "Praise of"... All these articles are only about works/things titled or named as such; nothing in the sense of anti-criticism), there are numerous criticism articles. I think community-wide consensus is needed about the WP:POVFORKiness of these "Criticism of..." articles, before they can be deleted. IMO all criticism articles are unnecessary POV-forks and against WP not being an opinion piece.

Having said that, Criticism of Muhammad seems to be a WP:SYNTHESIS of everything negative that people have historically said about Muhammad. Most of the stuff there should be relocated to the subjects that are criticised, such as all the main articles mentioned in Criticism of Muhammad#Points of contention. - HyperGaruda (talk) 07:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The argument for deletion is that the article is an essay, that is, a piece of original research trying to make a point, and that it is a content fork of material already covered elsewhere, as well as an aggregation of quotations with little in the way of context. Mkkamran (talk) 15:05, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is definitely staying. There needs to be a 2 sided perspective on the 2nd most popular religious figure in the world. Every other major religion can handle criticism and so must Islam. Thesqueegeeman (talk) 04:58, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - A serious and very notable topic. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:08, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I think the argument for deleting "Criticism of" and "Veneration and praise of" forks based on WP:NPOV is misplaced. The subject of these articles is the criticism, veneration and praise, not the person or organization being criticized. In this case policy dictates that the discussion of the criticism should be balanced per WP:NPOV (including criticism of the criticism), based on non-primary sources and not degenerate into a quote farm, which is what tends to happen in practice. The deletion of "Veneration and praise" counterpart (with which I disagree) was based not so much on NPOV grounds, as on WP:OR and WP:QUOTEFARM. Eperoton (talk) 17:25, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Eperoton that these point-of-view articles should discuss the point of views, instead of merely stating the points of view. Criticism of Muhammad has a couple of discussions, but there's also plenty of "bare criticism", such as Modern critics have criticized Muhammad for preaching beliefs that are incompatible with democracy; Somali-Dutch feminist writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali has called him a "tyrant"[29] and a "pervert".[30] The Dutch Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders calls Muhammad a "mass murderer and a pedophile".[31] The article could use a good cleanup to remove passages like these, or at least expand them to include an analysis of said criticism. If not, we're essentially dealing with WP:NOTREPOSITORY in this case. - HyperGaruda (talk) 20:31, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Also note the following comment from the deletion review for the veneration and praise article ([1]: "No prejudice against recreation of a policy-compliant article under this or a similar title." Eperoton (talk) 18:18, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - To my way of thinking, and given my own religious background, there is a significant difference between "praise" and "veneration". "Praise" is ordinary, human, pedestrian. In Catholicism, "veneration" is something closer to the worship of the sacred -- which Christians cannot call "worship" because that would put a saint on the same level as the deity (and that would be sacrilegious in Christian doctrine). Theologically, Mohammed has a similar status to Mary and Catholic saints: venerated, but not divine. I note that we have article titled "Veneration" and "Veneration of Mary in Roman Catholicism," which discuss the doctrine underlying the veneration of saints and the various rites involved; those are notable and encyclopedic topics and the articles seem to me to strike the right balance. A similar article, written in a neutral tone and discussing the related rites and underlying Islamic doctrine regarding the veneration of Mohammed would be an appropriate stand-alone article, with an emphasis on scholarly commentary on the primary religious texts, doctrine and rites found in secondary sources. What is not appropriate is an article whose text is based mostly on extended passages from the Koran and Hadith, sourced solely or primarily on the Koran and Hadith; the article should be written in a neutral tone and should be largely descriptive, not as a religious text. If we can strike that balance, I would support a stand-alone "Veneration of Mohammed in Islam" article, but I also recognize that many of our self-selected contributors do not (and will not) be able to strike that balance and there is not easy solution to that challenge. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep - While it is indeed a content fork (which is understandable given the length of the parent article), it seems rather absurd that such a well-sourced and long-established article would be nominated for deletion. It's certainly not an attack page, given the notability and currency of such criticism (including within multiple fields of academia). The argument for deletion seems to misinterpret core policy (as The Rambling Man pointed out), and dare I say it: be somewhat disingenuous. I won't visit the intentions of the nominator, but per their own comments, this AfD nom seems to be related to the deletion of the aforementioned 'praise' article which apparently "failed key policies so badly as to be unsalvageable". If the nominator disagrees with having articles of this ilk on Wikipedia (though they apparently only nominated this one), that's fine; but that would require sweeping changes across the project with the deletion of literally dozens of articles. And this isn't the way to do it. Take this discussion to the appropriate forum; AfD shouldn't be used to make a point, engage in apologetics, or provide "balance" for other articles. I'm honestly a bit surprised an administrator hasn't closed this discussion already.Quinto Simmaco (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I think that this and other criticism pages have to be kept. Criticism of a religion/person/ideology are a distinct subject than the ideology itself, and I think that the existence of such pages is legitimate. Flauius Claudius Iulianus (talk) 01:58, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Islam-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 03:55, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.