More Reason to Doubt Me: WikiIslam a Redo
In the vast array of things I’ve covered since I started this blog I have sometimes unintentionally misrepresented my own position or lost my patience but on one particular occasion I have presented what I now see as simply bad information.
Nothing I’ve mentioned in the course of this blog compares to happily referring people to WikiIslam. I’ve since realized due to the tone in their articles, seemingly selective sourcing and conflict between wanting to criticize Islam and their professed desire to be objective that they are often biased and I wouldn’t recommend any of their articles with commentary.* It’s still useful for references, like an approximation of the chronological order in which the Qur’an, but despite their aspirations of being a all encompassing take on Islam I wouldn’t recommend using their main articles as a starting point for any topic. For all things Islam I’ve been referring to Al Tafsir, Quran Explorer and The Quranic Arabic Corpus since I discovered them and have totally avoided ever going to WikiIslam for anything. Though none of those are attempts at an encyclopedia of information about Islam, they all are quite helpful specifically when trying to uncover the meaning of certain passages in the Qur’an. For example, The Quranic Arabic Corpus, an annotated linguistic look at the Qur’an, contains a word by word translation from Arabic that allows you to check the meaning of each word and every use of that word in the Qur’an.
This correction was long overdue and as a result maybe only half of you were following me when I referred this site. It’s only by realizing that I never use that site that it occurred to me why I don’t. This entire situation brings me to a more important thought that I’ve been meaning to stress more often: If at any point you think I present any flawed reasoning, unsupported information or make false claims please point it out. I don’t want to harbor false beliefs any longer than I have to and with your help maybe I can shake off some of those damaging false beliefs sooner.
My apologies and I’ll try to do better in the future.
*Correction - The vague statement “quite obviously biased” has been replaced with detailed criticism
