Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criteria of True Prophet

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 Redirect to Prophethood (Ahmadiyya). Whether or not "Ahmadiyyah is a fringe Islamic sect" is irrelevant here, we are only concerned with notability and fringe subjects (whether in science or religion) can certainly be notable. The current article is rather badly written and another, somewhat better one, on almost the same subject is available. Therefore I am redirecting this to Prophethood (Ahmadiyya). Any content worth merging there is still available in the history of the redirect. Randykitty (talk) 22:44, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria of True Prophet

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No reliable sources found to verify notability. Article is entirely based on primary sources (Quranic verses) and partisan secondary sources (Ahmadi literature arguing for Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's claim to prophethood). This is evident in the very first citation, which states, "The Ahmadiyya Missionary at Canada has written a treatise on the subject. The proofs from the Quran have been summarised in it. The article is based on Ansar Raza's treatise." Not a single third-party source is cited to show notability of the topic or to support any part of the article. Article has been tagged for months with regards to POV, notability, original research, etc., yet no improvements have been made. Axiom292 (talk) 04:27, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Islam-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CommentMy recommendation for this article is that non-islamic sources are added like books from religious writers with an academic title. The current content indeed only applies to a certain belief system which is too specific to have for a new article. I think though that the subject of the criteria of a true prophet are an important subject in islam and there should be information about it on wikipedia. It could be possibly included in an article about islamic laws. Bokareis (talk) 19:52, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, Ahmadiyyah is a fringe Islamic sect. Their views are given undue weight in this article. Muslims consider Muhammad the last prophet. Ahmadiyyah do not, just having this article is the same as promoting a fringe view over a mainstream view. Ahmadiyyah's make up about 3 million out of the 1.6 billion muslims, thats how fringe it is. Its in the same level as Nation of Islam--Misconceptions2 (talk) 12:01, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Misconceptions2: Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think we use WP:FRINGE for minor religious movements, and one with 3 million adherents is not that small. Perhaps the appropriate thing to do would be to rename the article to something like "Ahmadiyyah Criteria for a True Prophet" and change the language of the article to say "Ahmadiyyah believe that..." and so forth. --Sammy1339 (talk) 15:55, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your solution violates WP:POVFORK. Regardless, as far as I can tell the topic fails WP:GNG, so there is no basis for the article to exist in the first place.--Axiom292 (talk) 23:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not a POV fork, it's an article about what is arguably the defining belief of a cult with over three million adherents (and the notion that it fails WP:GNG is a little silly, frankly.) We mustn't treat articles about religious topics as if they were about statements of fact - if we did, we would have to note in every article on an Islamic subject that essentially every statement is a minority view, simply because most people are not Muslims. Since that would be absurd, we instead write "Scientologists believe this," "Mormons believe that" and so forth. If the subject is relevant to several religions, we try to include all views, so the Jesus article contains information about both Muslim and Christian beliefs as well as the beliefs of smaller religious movements. In this case, though, other Islamic sects lack criteria for prophethood, and therefore have nothing to say about this topic except that they don't believe in it. The overwhelming majority of people on Earth are non-Scientologists like myself who dispute the existence of Xenu, but that doesn't stop us from having an article on him, because he is relevant as part of Scientologists' beliefs. --Sammy1339 (talk) 04:10, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake, it would not be considered a POV fork. But regarding notability - I am not denying the importance of prophethood in the Ahmadi faith, which your Google Books search ([1]) shows. In fact there is already an article, Prophethood (Ahmadiyya). However can you find any third-party sources discussing the Ahmadi religion's "criteria of a true prophet"? The original editor of the article has explicitly stated that the article is a summary of one polemical booklet by an Ahmadi missionary, Ansar Raza. Yet the article currently is nothing more than a hodgepodge of direct quotes to primary sources along with many unreferenced interpretations - not even Ahmadi sources are cited. I could not even find some of the article's points in Raza's booklet. Apart from even a mention in third-party sources, is there even a standard list of these "criteria of a true prophet" across different Ahmadi sources? Even if there was, neutral third-party sources would still be necessary. Otherwise if the article is renamed and rewritten anyway, then in the absence of third-party sources another new article titled "Islamic view of Ahmadiyyah Criteria for a True Prophet" seems just as notable, because just like Raza's booklet, there are plenty of anti-Ahmadi works giving an alternate interpretation of the sources presented by Ahmadis.--Axiom292 (talk) 07:45, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per my comments above, and because this is sadly not the first time I have seen minority Islamic religious views come under attack on Wikipedia. I would like to see better and more neutral (secular) references provided, which should be easy in light of the enormous number of sources available: [2]. --Sammy1339 (talk) 04:10, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 16:13, 8 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merge/redirect with Prophethood (Ahmadiyya). That would keep whatever information is in the article and address the "attack" mentioned above by Sammy1339. (As an aside, if you see these enormous number of available resources, then feel free to boldly add them to the article. —Gaff ^ταλκ 16:48, 8 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Can add the criteria of prophet specified in various other religious texts. Just because Ahmadiyya forms smaller group doesn't make their contribution invalid. - Vatsan34 (talk) 17:15, 8 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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.