User:RFarag/Evaluate an Article

Sectarian violence among Muslims
Sectarian violence among Muslims

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
When I first opened the article "Sectarian violence among Muslims", I was surprised to see that many subheadings did not contain much information, and often referred to a different Wikipedia article without providing any information under the subheading. Therefore, the article seemed incomplete to me at first glance, and I was curious to see what I would think of the article if I would dig deeper by evaluating it along the provided framework.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The first sentence of the article provides the reader with a clear and concise definition of the topic of the article. Overall, the lead section is brief - maybe too brief, as it does not provide the reader with an overview of the main sections of the article. The lead section could thus be improved by adding a short and clear overview of the contents of the article.

Content

The content of the article seems incomplete and unbalanced to me. The content that is there, seems relevant to the topic, but is not fully up to date: The most recent incident of sectarian violence mentioned in the article took place in 2013, which is now 8 years ago. This article could be improved by the addition of more recent incidents of sectarian violence among Muslims that took place between 2013 and now.

There is also a lot of context missing from the article: First of all, the article only focusses on "Modern", which is divided in subsections that discuss sectarian violence among Muslims in 9 different countries. This article would benefit from the addition of information on sectarian violence among Muslims in time-periods other than "Modern". Second of all, the 9 subsections that present an overview of sectarian violence among Muslims in 9 different countries are out of balance, as some subsections contain 1-3 paragraphs, while others do not list any text at all - instead, they refer to another Wikipedia article that deals with sectarianism or sectarian violence in the specific region. I believe this article would be much stronger if all the subsections contained a significant amount of information on the matter, while linking to these other Wikipedia articles in-text.

The article does deal with minorities to some extent, as it mentions different Islamic sects that are not as common as Sunni and Shia.

Tone and balance

The overall tone of the article is non-biased, and I do not feel the article tries to persuade the reader to favor one position over another. I do however think that some sentences in the article dangerously lean towards making an argument. These particular sentences are:

"Such sectarian tensions resulted in a violent insurgency ..." Here, It feels like the writer drew a conclusion her/himself, which might not be the case - which then should be stated more clearly.

And: "However, the Government of Saudi Arabia does discriminate against and/or persecute Shia Muslims, Ahmadiyaa and even non – Salafist Sunni Islam." Here, the author should be more clear on the fact that this is not her/his opinion, but that it is a statement that s/he found in one of the sources s/he consulted.

I feel the viewpoints of religious and political leaders are overrepresented in this article. Minority viewpoints are not very prevalent in the article, but could enrich the scope of the article if added.

Sources and references

I think the sources and references of this article are in need of an update/improvement.

First of all, it seems like not all facts are backed by a source. The first few sentences under "In Iraq" for example, are not followed by a reference to a source.

Second of all, the sources are not current, not written by a diverse spectrum of authors, and I also believe them to be not thorough. The most recent source used is from 2017, which is now 4 years ago. Also, all sources are in English, are published on 'Western' platforms, and are predominantly written by white males. There are no sources written by the people at stake, let alone by minorities. One of many sources published on this topic in 2020:

Abbas, Syed Ali, and Shabib Haider Syed. "Sectarian terrorism in Pakistan: Causes, impact and remedies." Journal of Policy Modeling (2020).

A major improvement would be a more varied and more recent body of literature to enrich and back the content of the article.

The links in the article seem to work fine.

Organization and writing quality

Although it is understandable, I do not think the article is well written. There are a few mistakes in spelling, and in one instance a name is written in two different manners in one paragraph: "Sheikh Al Shaykh" and "Sheikh Al-AsShaikh".

I also feel like some sections, such as the first paragraph under "In Bahrein" are not streamlined - rather a recital of different facts that are not weaved together in a seamless narrative. Writing the article in a narrative style would make it more interesting to read.

The article is broken down in clear segments, but as most segments are empty, I am not too sure why these have been installed in the first place.

Images and media

The article contains one single image, which portrays the different demographics and subsets within Islam. The image is positioned well, but if possible it could have been a bit bigger. I believe the image adheres to the copyright regulation, and that the caption is clear. I think the article would profit from a few extra images that illustrate for example the different instances of sectarian violence, or important people that are mentioned in the text.

Talk page discussion

In the talk page of the article, the main points of discussion are sources and referencing. There is one general question/comment on the one-sided nature of the references under "In Saudi Arabia", and a more elaborate comment - accompanying the deletion of a subsection - related to the lack of sources under "In Bahrain".

What I found very interesting to see is that the article was nominated for deletion on 31 January 2012, after which the discussion led to no consensus.

The article is part of the WikiProject Islam, but has not yet received a rating.

Overall impressions

My overall impression is that the article is not complete, and qualitatively weak. I feel this article would need several improvements in order to be representative of the topic.

These improvements would include completing the content by adding different time-periods, by adding other countries where sectarian violence among Muslims has taken place (such as Egypt), and more generally by adding text to the subheadings that now remain empty.

Another improvement would be a broader spectrum of sources, that includes muslim writers, female writers, and other minorities. Also, the addition of sources that have appeared after 2017 would be crucial to the improvement of this article.

This article would also benefit from a broader representation of perspectives, as it now focusses predominantly on the perspectives of religious and political leaders.

I think this article has a lot of potential, but is now heavily underdeveloped - and what is there is poorly developed.