Sunnah and Shia questions

Question

Proposal: Islam

All Muslims know that Sunnah and Shia topics are so sensitive. In real life things got pretty ugly and these topics between Sunnah and Shia ended up in armed conflicts in some cases. Things wont be different here. I think there should be some clear guidelines regarding this issue otherwise arguments and fights will never end.

I suggest the following guidelines:

• No questions that encourage comparisons. People tend to show their best and show the other parties worst when comparing thus this will be a trigger to many fights.
• Answers to any questions regarding Sunnah and Shia should be supported with a source from the holly quran or Hadeeth. Letting people answering questions on this topic without a proper source will cause more problems.
• Adding the tags (suunah and shia) and encourage users to use one of them in addition to the other related tags in order to avoid people from the different denomination answering this question and causing a conflict to start.

I know there are some types of questions where this can not avoided, specially if the question was posted by non-Muslim then both Sunnah and Shia will try to answer from their point of view and from their sources. These questions should be monitored to make sure every answer is an Answer to the original question and not an answer to one of the other answers which he/she doesn't like!!

I think you might have better suggestions, So please let us put it all together from now so we don't spend the time flagging questions and comments...etc.

Information for non-Muslims

Sunnah and Shia are two different denominations of Islam, Something like Orthodox and Protestant in Christianity. Any way more than 90% of Muslims are Sunnah (around 1.4 billions) and around 150-200 million Muslims are Shia (Source: Wikipedia 1,2)

Answer 1

I don't think it is a good idea to discuss these very conflict-ive topics here. Discussing these sensitive topics will only bring more conflict. So, I support your idea; we shouldn't compare them, we shouldn't even bring them into subject.
Muhammed (a.s.) was neither Sunnah nor Shia, he was just a Muslim. As a follower of him, I define myself as only a Muslim, and nothing more. In this community, I won't talk about Sunnah or Shia.

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Surat Rum, Ayat #32:

From those who have divided their religion and become sects, every faction rejoicing in what it has.

Answer 2

I do not think we should bring anything up that will divide us.

Answer 3

Similar sensitive issues exist in other SE sites. The system already has mechanisms to deal with augmentative questions. Note that SE sites are not debate or discussion sites, they are Q&A sites. It is fine to answer a question from different perspectives and each of those perspectives can be a valid answer to the question. One answer can explain the Sunni view, another one can explain Shia view (and there are various views by Islamic scholars towards issues inside each sect). There shouldn't be a problem just because of that as long as each answer is clearly stately the perceptive and doesn't claim to be the only view expressed by Muslim scholars.

Generally I feel that these suggestions are being made by people who don't have much experience in using the SE sites and don't know how things work on them. I suggest new users committed to the proposal who don't have much experience in using SE sites to wait and let more experienced users deal with these issues. The site will have a meta where issues like these can be discussed, and the system already has many tools to deal with issues like this one. For example, a moderator can lock/protect a post in case it turns into an extensive debate/discussion, can remove comments which are not helpful, etc. If a user is strictly asking for an answer from a specific perspective any answer that is giving information from another perspective can be removed as not answering the question. Answers which are personal opinions without support will (hopefully) down-voted. On the other hand, if a question doesn't state a particular perspective, then there can be answers which explain different views towards what is being asked. Each is a valid answer to the question and which one is "the right" interpretation is not going to be debated.

I think it is also important to remind the new users that insults and rudeness will not be tolerated on the site, there is a zero tolerance policy towards posts/users who are not respectful to others. Any answer or comment that is not stated in a respectful manner can be removed and repeated offenders can be banned.

Bad subjective questions like "which of these is better?" will be closed as non-constructive or not-a-real-question. Such questions also appear on other sites and there are users who have strong opinions about them, e.g. the famous Vim vs. Emacs wars, the system already has tools to deal with these cases.

Answer 4

Quran as the ultimate source of Islam has strictly banned to create or support sects in Islam:

مِنَ الَّذِينَ فَرَّقُوا دِينَهُمْ وَكَانُوا شِيَعًا ۖ كُلُّ حِزْبٍ بِمَا لَدَيْهِمْ فَرِحُونَ (الروم/32)

[be not of] those who have divided up their religion, and become sects, each several party rejoicing in what is theirs.