Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fatwas


 * 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. Doczilla @SUPERHEROLOGIST 19:35, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

List of fatwas

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Even for a list, this particular page is vague, arbitrary and synth-like. While propositioned as a dynamic list of 'fatwas', this is essentially (as noted on talk) just an entirely headline-hitting news-driven collection of such items that have stirred controversy. A page title of "List of the most salacious and controversial fatwas" might be more true to form. Fatwas are just legal opinions. Half of these 'notable fatwas' barely have a handful of news references, let alone their own page - this is notable? These legal opinions are from all and sundry. The lack of talk page discussion is testament to how little thought has been put into whether these are notable scholars from notable institutions, as opposed to ones that just got in the news. In law, the notability of legal opinions is derived from their impact on the body of law, which I suspect is established for few if any entries on this list. This page is not, in any way, a serious attempt to comprehensively catalogues legal opinions. There is not a single cited academic work devoted to cataloguing or even explaining the complexity of attempting to catalogue fatwas as a genre. Instead it is perhaps one of the clearest examples of content flying in the face of WP:NOTNEWS I have seen. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:30, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Law, Religion,  and Islam. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:30, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment without going into a lengthy and detailed reply I don’t see this page as being as problematic as the nominator feels it is. It doesn’t need to be comprehensive and may well benefit from trimming. It’s not an exact equivalent but we also have List of papal bulls which includes a similar mix of content. Mccapra (talk) 11:46, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I would go a little further than 'not an exact equivalent'. A papal bull is a significant landmark ruling by the head of a religious denomination: many of them launched wars or yielded other significant historical impacts. In this article, on the contrary, many of the fatwas listed are from extremely average Joe sheikhs of little standing or relevance. A list of historic fatwas from Islamic figures of high religious authority, limited perhaps to the likes of grand muftis and ayatollahs might somewhat approach a list of papal bulls in similarity, but that is not, on the whole, what this article is. Despite claiming to be about 'notable historical and contemporary fatwas', apart from two from the 1500s, the rest of the list is news-driven drivel from the late-20th century onwards. It is basically just another one-from-among-many lists of Islam-related controversies, in this particular case with 'fatwa' as the organizing theme. It began with the Salman Rushdie fatwa (actually notable) and proceeded from there, gaining fatwa-related controversies but precious little insight or nuance. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:20, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The prospect of making this article better is also fairly unrealistic. I'm sure there are tomes of fatwas written in Arabic in Al-Azhar University, much as there are great tomes of Western legal opinions and precedents. Over 1,400 years of Islamic legal history, the actual number of fatwas presumably lists in the hundreds of thousands if not the millions, and a history of truly notable fatwas would begin with the 7th century based on scholarly works on the subject in English (if extant). As it stands, the sad collection of fatwas listed here, and strung together with news references could readily be folded back into the main article on fatwa, which is not even that long, and already discusses many of the entries here, such as the Salman Rushdie case. In fact, it is already better in terms of covering examples with real world significance, such as the 1891 tobacco protest fatwa. Though I don't see others, such as the Oran fatwa, so perhaps a judicious merge may ultimately be a better option. I would not mind alternatively resolving it that way. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:32, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete with fire. This is a handy tool to demonstrate the backwardness of Islam by neatly cherry-picking the most fatuous fatwas you can find - but there are many, many thousands of fatwas issued in history by any number of 'authorities' who could - or, indeed could not, represent majority or authoritative views of Islamic jurisprudence. To nod to the arguments made above by Iskandar323, you might as well list laws made in Europe and focus on the EU bendy bananas stuff - and expecting consensus or editors to arrive and make this skewed list better or more balanced is simply expecting too much. It's this kind of thing that keeps Muslim editors away, IMHO. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 14:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Deleting a notable, referenced list because it because it is a potentially controversial or sensitive topic or might discourage a particular editor is not appropriate. I could certainly see improving or editing the article or pruning it to put it into context as appropriate, if references are found to back it up, but it is a referenced list with interesting and valuable data that ought to be kept. Bookworm857158367 (talk) 14:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment I did not argue to delete it because it is "potentially controversial or sensitive" or that it might discourage an editor - to reinforce my main point, a list of fatwas would be like a list of changes to the laws of European countries prior to and post the EU. It's a huge, unmanageable, insane list and sourcing it properly almost impossible in enwiki. Stick to Fatwa and highlight some notable fatwas, by all means. But undertaking anything like a useful list of them is just nuts - and begging to be misused/skewed as I said. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:08, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, what we have here is already the result of leaving the possibility of such a list to the imagination of the community, and in place of an encyclopedic entry, we have a sad collection of fatwa-related news headlines from the past two decades. But realistically, given the unlimited scope of the task, and the limited energies of editors, this was perhaps the only possible outcome of the exercise. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:17, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 18:51, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep Well referenced article, reliable sources do give significant coverage to these things.  D r e a m Focus  19:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Verifiability is the most basic criteria for inclusion, in principle, but that is it - this does not speak to the any of the bigger questions of due weight, notability or WP:SYNTH. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:25, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. There are fatwas notable enough to have whole Wikipedia articles, there no reason not to have a list of them all. Maybe cut down the text so that this list article is more list like, but other than that there's no cause for deletion. --StellarNerd (talk) 20:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * There are but handful of fatwas with their own articles, such that all of them could very readily be covered on the main fatwa article, which is not even that long at present. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:00, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Trim and merge Some of these topics are touched on in Fatwa already, and I think discussion there of the relevance of these is more appropriate than just a listing of what some random imams have proclaimed, often to mockery or disregard. Reywas92Talk 20:16, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with the trim, but there are 48 entries in Category:Fatwas, it would be crowded to keep them all in Fatwa if you include a short description of them. --StellarNerd (talk) 20:36, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Quite, the entries subject to short-lived 'mockery and disregard' in the news cycle (WP:SUSTAINED), in particular, might otherwise be termed the antithesis of 'notable'. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:58, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete – Total violation of WP:SYNTH. Think of the very rough Western equivalent: List of decisions by major national and international courts or—more accurately—List of controversial decisions by major national and international courts, and including decisions from the 1600s to boot. It's not like a list of decisions by the ICJ where there's a clear criterion for inclusion, and where the consequences of each decision are well-defined. Your average Muslim in the United States will not follow a fatwa from Indonesia that the MMR vaccine is haram. Ovinus (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, certainly in the 21st century, the influence of many sheikhs is limited to their country, so many of these are, in effect, highly localised legal opinions with little influence beyond that, so we have random local proclamations of little regard in Afghanistan vying with local proclamations in Indonesia. As such, the proper way of categorizing 21st-century fatwas, which are limited to a country, would be to produce lists or categories by country. For example, for English law you have List of early landmark court cases. Or, if you look in the wider category of Case law lists by court, everything is listed by country and court, e.g.: List of High Court of Australia cases. So, what ties all fatwas together? Just being fatwas? Think how stupid List of legal opinions would be. Where to even begin? The answer is definitely not 'pick up a newspaper'. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:21, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Page has many sources about important historic information. This is a notable article if there ever was one. Fad Ariff (talk) 09:55, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * To be clear, this article by its very nature cherrypicks controversial fatwas—whichever ones get traction in English-language sources—and that presents a huge neutrality and synthesis issue. There need to be keep arguments which rebut this argument that several editors are making, including the nom, who based on their user page seems to have more familiarity with Islamic law and its modern consequences than do the rest of us. In particular, what characteristics differentiate this article topic from something like List of legal opinions? Ovinus (talk) 22:30, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * And, as noted above, verifiability alone does not guarantee notability or prevent synth, least of all in a list. The question is does anything establish this particular selection as credible, except for the news cycle - the news cycle itself not being a reliable source. Again, we don't have any source (currently provided) cataloguing 'notable fatwa', and the list preface lays out no relevant criteria. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:21, 24 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep Though some WP:UNDUE summaries need to be reduced. REDISCOVERBHARAT (talk) 06:24, 27 June 2022 (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.