Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sectarianism in the Ottoman Empire


 * 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 soft delete. Based on minimal participation, this uncontroversial nomination is treated as an expired PROD (a.k.a. "soft deletion"). Editors can request the article's undeletion. The SandDoctor Talk 04:32, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Sectarianism in the Ottoman Empire

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This article is an incomplete and not very coherent essay about a topic and it is hard to make a case for its deletion without writing another essay, but here goes:

Is there a valid encyclopaedic topic? Debatable. One of the sources used in the article says “sectarianism is far less an objective description of “real” fractures in a religiously diverse world, and far more a language about the nature of religious difference in the Middle East. Despite the well-documented history of religious violence in the United States... the term “sectarianism” is rarely used in scholarship about the United States. For most American academics... sectarianism remains a topic about other places and peoples. “Sectarianism” is a discourse that has been deployed... to create and justify political and ideological frameworks in the modern Middle East within which supposedly innate sectarian problems are contained, if not necessarily overcome.’ So even just with the title we are in sensitive territory.

Assuming there is a valid topic, is this a valid treatment? No it isn’t. It takes material already reasonably well covered in articles such as Millet (Ottoman Empire), Confessionalism (politics) and Tanzimat and presents them in a way that presupposes that religious differences and differences in rights equate to sectarianism. By this definition more or less every state in history has been ‘sectarian’, but the article does not really explain what was distinctive about intercommunal relations in the Ottoman Empire.

There is something to be written about religious communities in the Ottoman Empire, how they co-existed, and how conflicts arose between them, but this is a topic that requires careful treatment to ensure accuracy and neutrality. I can’t see how the current article is a basis for that. In my view it fails WP:SYNTH, cherry-picking from its sources, and it cannot be rewritten under this title to improve it. I think we should delete it and in time a better start will be made. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Discrimination-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Islam-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Turkey-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (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.