Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Birthplace of Ali ibn Abi Talib

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 of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. Owen× ☎ 16:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Birthplace of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Please compare with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/People reported to be born in the Kaaba. It's kind of a zero-sum game since there is no need for both articles. (my reasoning below). gren グレン

This article is created in respons to a revert was in the Ali article. IMHO, the article is pov in both content, form and title.

If the "Birthplace of Ali ibn Abi Talib" article is simply NPOV, then it must be merged into the Ali article. If it is representing a pov, that being Shi'a pov, it must be merged into Shi'a view of Ali. However, it is neither, it is not representing Shi'a pov, nor is it NPOV. Nor is it the pov of anyone else. The creator of the article, and sole contributor to it is User:Zora. The article is nothing more than Zora POV.

The whole content is basicly saying this:

• Shi'a are a minority
• Shi'a love Ali
• Shi'a belive Ali was born in the Kaaba
• Shi'a quote Sunni sources, not implying that Sunni belive their own source.

(a direct lie, since i have proven in many talk pages and dialogs with Zora that Sunnis belive in that also)

• Sunni say he was born in his own house.

(Again, i direct lie, Zora presented a page she belive contained that information, but in fact, the site contradicted her by stating that there is a consensus that Ali was born in the Kaaba. No matter, the site was unprofesional and would not constitute evidence even if it contained what Zora belived it contained. Zora has not presented any source at all that has contradicted or even comments negativly on the credibility of that specific narration.)

• Sunni have a alternative candidate, whom they hardly mention.

(This part of the article is given unfairly little attention)

• No academic historian supports the Shi'a claim.

(Implying that Shi'a and Sunni scholars are not academics. I have proven that a Sunni scholar regarded it as authentic)

Now, compare it to this article: People reported to be born in the Kaaba.

1. That article clearly says it is "reports", not mentioning factual credibilty.
2. It mentions both cases separatly
3. It gives clear reference to both cases
4. It gives the pov of Sunni, Shi'a and non-Muslims on both cases
5. It does not try to discredit the information of one of the cases by first giving a rant about why shi'a whould be biased to beliving in one version.
6. It contains a NPOV title, "People reported to be born in the Kaaba", instead of the a pov title focused on one of the two.

Lastly i want to repeat myself:

If the "Birthplace of Ali ibn Abi Talib" article is simply NPOV, then it must be merged into the Ali article. If it is representing a pov, that being Shi'a pov, it must be merged into Shi'a view of Ali. However, it is neither, it is not representing Shi'a pov, nor is it NPOV. Nor is it the pov of anyone else. The creator of the article, and sole contributor to it is User:Zora. The article is nothing more than Zora POV.

• Delete --Striver 03:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep (read Zora's comments here). I am going to put up Striver's article for deletion (i.e. perging other part to Hakim) since I believe that is the article of the two that should be deleted. Either version would need work, of course, but this naming scheme is better in my opinion and it doesn't create an article relating the rather unrelated subjects of the birth of Hakim and Ali. gren グレン 08:10, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, or Merge this article with People reported to be born in the Kaaba. Either keep the title of this article, or come up with another title. "Report" is a POV-pushing term when applied to 200-300 year old oral traditions. Zora 08:29, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
• Having read User:Zora's comments, I suggest holding this vote over for 5 days to allow her to clean-up the page as she offers, then re-list for a fresh discussion. I see no need for two articles on the same subject (if that is what these are): but (if these are 2 subjects, then each should be dealt with on its/their own. --Simon Cursitor 08:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
• This is my first VFD nomination, if i am not misstaken...--Striver 03:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment from the editor who created the article -- expanding on a comment on the talk page of the article.

My first entry on the talk page said that the article was a placeholder and not very good. On looking at it again, I agree that it needs a lot of work. I had just forgotten to come back to it. However, I don't think it needs to be deleted. Give me a day or two to work on it and I'm sure I can improve it.

Striver is trying to get this article removed so that his version of this same controversy, People reported to be born in the Kaaba, is the only one left standing. Clearly, the two articles should be merged. They should not be merged under "People reported to be born in the Kaaba", as that is ungrammatical. Nor is it a good representation of the controversy.

The use of the term "report" suggests eyewitness reports. But the "reports" were in fact recorded 200 to 300 years after the supposed event, after having been passed down as oral traditions for hundreds of years. Moreover, they were recorded at a time when the Shi'a and Sunni sects of Islam were "settling out" as religious sects rather than political parties. Proto-Shi'a were already making extensive claims for Ali's exalted status, birth in the Kaaba, semi-divinity, etc.

Hadith are a vast corpus of contradictory materials. Even Muslim scholars agree that many of them are not reliable. Non-Muslim scholars treat them as so much fable, or use them with extreme caution. By treating 200-300 year old rumors as "reports", Striver is pushing his Shi'a POV, in which Ali is a perfect human being, without sin or error, and must therefore have been born in a way befitting his exalted condition.

What Striver is NOT saying is that many Sunni do not believe that the hadith reporting Ali's birth in the Kaaba are reliable. We had one Sunni editor who flatly contradicted Striver, saying that he did NOT believe the tradition. But Striver has already forgotten that and is again accusing me of lying.

Striver is also being less than candid in not reporting that the "birth in the Kaaba" tradition is not included in any of the sira literature. It seems to be a late tradition, not an early one. Nor is Striver mentioning the contemporary academics who don't even mention the tradition, having dismissed it as a myth that doesn't even merit refuting. I'm perfectly willing for Striver to have all the room he needs to lay out the Shi'a position and list all the hadith said to support it. I just want him to let other views have equal room -- and for him to let proponents of other views state their own positions.

When I picked the title "Birthplace of Ali ibn Abi Talib", I was trying hard for a non-POV title. I think the title I chose is non-POV, in that it doesn't take any stand on where Ali was born. If other editors can think of a different, better, title, I'd be OK with that too.

If the two articles are merged, the resulting article is going to be the scene of intense controversy and many revert wars, I'm afraid. But I suppose that's OK, since what I was trying to do was take the controversy out of the Ali ibn Abi Talib article, where it has been simmering ever since Striver started editing there. If the controversy has its own article, there should be room to lay out all the arguments, references, etc. Zora 08:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Merge and Redirect to Ali ibn Abi Talib unless the article is significantly expanded and NPOVed by the end of this week. Blackcats 17:17, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Clean and Merge I don't know what this article says, I don't know what it's about. It seems to be sort of a hearsay piece. I don't see the point of this article, put it in the man's bio (including reference to scholarly debate). DeathThoreau 18:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment The problem with putting the issue in the bio is the issue is so contentious that it completely hijacks the bio. Putting it in a breakout article makes room for discussion, for all parties to lay out arguments, etc. I'm not adamant about this, however. Particularly as my tactic of trying to keep the bio neutral and put the controversies into their own articles has been completely undermined by an influx of Shi'a editors determined to turn the article into hagiography. It's rather like the continuing struggles over the Jesus article. Zora 20:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment As it stands I'd support the deletion of this article, but I'll hold off on voting since Zora intends to work on it. Clearly there is an issue here worth treatment, but I'm still not sure that it can't fit into the Ali article. While I appreciate Zora's comments in that regard, in principle I really don't like the idea of creating separate subarticles for controversial issues that aren't justified by the amount of valuable content in them.Palmiro | Talk 21:57, 13 December 2005 (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.