Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Holiest sites in Sunni Islam


 * 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. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 09:02, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Holiest sites in Sunni Islam
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log )

Sources do not contain notablity regarding Sunni holy sites, for example: There's not a single source which indicates that all sites mentioned are holy in "Sunni Islam". Most of the sites mentioned here are mentioned in Holiest sites in Islam. No site, literally no site claims that these sites are holy in Sunni Islam Biskut Merry (talk) 07:52, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2021 September 9.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 08:07, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Islam-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 08:21, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 08:21, 9 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep While this might be a POVfork, holy sites can well differ between religious divisions within a faith; as a protestant I could care less about Lourdes, but understand that certain other religious sites (e.g. Church of the Holy Sepulchre) are venerated in all major divisions of Christianity. To that end, the nomination statement appears to be too problematic to evaluate within the context of a simple AfD. We all know that the various divisions within Islam all consider Mecca holy, and I presume that as we descend in order of importance, variations within the divisions will occur. I do not think it would be wise to delete a hypothetical Holiest sites in Orthodox Christianity, for example, just because a cursory review found that much overlapped a similarly hypothetical Holiest sites in Christianity. Jclemens (talk) 17:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Recently an AfD discussion resulted in the deletion of Holiest sites in Sufi Islam. I believe this may set a precedent for deletion of this page but I am pinging the editors involved in that discussion for comment: Mccapra Apaugasma. (I was a rather strong keep in that discussion so I hope this isn't misconstrued as canvassing.) Vladimir.copic (talk) 23:34, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep This makes a sense to me and is definitely not like Holiest sites in Sufi Islam (because we do not have a separate division in Islam called Sufi Islam, it is rather reformation of heart, as I know it). But I do think that some admin should bring the stuff from Sufi article to the Sunni Islam article. Sufism is majorly associated with Sunni Islam and it'd be hugely helpful for us to have such a list over here. ─ The Aafī   (talk)|undefined  07:37, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep I agree with TheAafi that this is not like Holiest sites in Sufi Islam. The importance of this list is that it excludes sites which are only revered by Shii Muslims. Sunni sources won’t describe themselves as Sunni, but simply as Muslim, so demonstrating notability is not straightforward. There may be a case for having a single list article showing sites revered by both Sunni and Shii Muslims and putting sites only of interest to Shii Muslims in a separate section. That would avoid all this forking but that’s outside the scope of this AfD. So despite the nominator’s good faith reasoning, I think the topic of this article is certainly notable. Mccapra (talk) 11:53, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename to List of holy sites in Sunni Islam - This is essentially a list of holy sites in Sunni Islam, which I think fails notability per WP:LISTN (it is not discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources), but which is still appropriate to keep per the same WP:LISTN : lists that fulfill recognized informational [...] purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability. However, according to WP:LISTCRITERIA, selection criteria [...] should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. Now while there is such an objective and reliably sourceable criterion for the three or four traditional holiest sites in Islam (the Kaaba in Mecca, The Prophet's Mosque in Medina, al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, to which said article should restrict itself), there is no such criterion for all the other sites mentioned in the article under discussion (nor for the ones listed in Holiest sites in Shia Islam and in Holiest sites in Islam). Reliable sources never discuss what exactly are the holiest sites in Islam apart from the main three or four (Sunni, Shia, or otherwise), and so this is not a reliable criterion. However, what are considered just "holy" sites in Sunni Islam (without any ranking) probably is an appropriate and sourceable criterion, so it would suffice to just rename the article. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 12:27, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * you yourself said we have an objective criteria for 3-4 holiest sites in Islam. Why not restrict the scope of this article to those sites?VR talk 10:22, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Also by this objective criterion do you mean the Sunni hadith that the prophet designated the mosques of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem as pilgrimage-worthy? If so, the topic is not "Holiest sites in Sunni Islam" but rather "Sunni view of Holiest sites in Islam". Which makes this a WP:POVFORK that I'd recommend merging back to Holiest sites in Islam.VR talk 10:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes I do mean the objective criteria you refer to (though there's more than that hadith, and though it's worth pointing out for others reading this that we should not directly refer to a primary source like a hadith, but to secondary sources, like VR did well here). I agree in principle with your merge proposals here and elsewhere, but as I also commented below, far more important in my view is that we should clearly distinguish between the historical concept of holiest sites and the typical wiki-lists of 'holy' sites: we created (and we should never create things) this confusion, and should undo it ASAP. Any article with "holiest sites" in its title should not be about anything but the historical Mecca-Medina-Jerusalem(-Damascus) series: that should be the priority, and deciding whether we want separate articles for Sunni and Shii views on this should only be a secondary concern. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 13:38, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Very good point and I’d support a rename too. Mccapra (talk) 18:40, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. I also support the current name, as it's rather consistent to how we deal with, well, Holiest sites in Islam. The two topics seem to be unique enough on their face to deserve different articles. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 05:05, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment - Both Holiest sites in Sunni Islam and Holiest sites in Shia Islam were split from Holiest sites in Islam on 12 March 2009 with the stated reason to clearly separate the Sunni from the Shi'i perspective (see the notice here), so they are indeed intended to treat the same topic. However, this topic (a list of all Islamic sites that some editors may consider holier than others) is based on a criterion that utterly fails WP:LISTCRITERIA as quoted above.
 * The trouble is that there actually is a sourceable concept of three or four holiest sites in Islam. In fact, our article Holiest sites in Islam started of in September 2006 as "Third holiest site in Islam", went through three monstrous AfD's (1, 2, 3), and after a lot of further discussion was eventually renamed in December 2006 to the current title (final decision here). The original topic of the article was a controversy over whether the Al-Aqsa Mosque is or is not the third holiest site in Islam. When this controversy was found to be too intractable to be the subject of an article, the renamed page inherited the word "holiest" from the original (from the sourceable 'third holiest' to the non-sourceable 'holiest in general').
 * But being now a list of merely 'holy' Islamic sites, it has nothing to do anymore with the traditional Islamic concept of three or four holiest sites. Being still named that way, however, it confuses the traditional Islamic concept with the very much Wikipedian concept of generic 'holiest sites in Islam' (just see what you get when typing "holiest sites in Islam" in Google Scholar). The latter is an artefact of the deletion and move discussions of 2006, and being created by Wikipedia itself (a type of 'Frankenstein'), it has no notability at all. I say it's high past time we corrected this mistake. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 19:14, 11 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep Indeed a POVFORK but still significant enough to deserve own article. Mukt (talk) 09:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge back into Holiest sites in Islam. I don't see why "holiest sites in Sunni Islam" or "List of holy sites in Sunni Islam" (as Apaugasma suggested) can't be covered at Holiest sites in Islam or List of holy sites in Islam, respectively. I prefer splits either when the parent article is too large or when the topic is too different, and neither seems to be the case here. We can't create Sunni WP:POVFORK for every Islam-related article there is.VR talk 10:22, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, clearly a notable topic deserving of its own article.Jackattack1597 (talk) 21:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)


 * 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.