Talk:Nazim Al-Haqqani

Consolidating articles

There is an almost identical page about this person at; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazim_al-Qubrusi The goal, once I investigate the proper proceedure, is to consolidate that previous page with this correctly titled page. The name Nazim al-Qubrusi is not widely used and the Mawlana Sheikh Nazim Al-Haqqani is what 99% of the people who know him, refer to him as. If you can offer advise on how to consolidate these pages or point to an area where to learn more, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you!!

The redirect has been done already on Aug 26, 2010. --Edoe (talk) 22:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for deletion

I have removed the proposal for deletion. I redirected the other article to this one, made some changes here to get rid of some WP:peacock terms and added some wikilinks. If he is the Grandsheik of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Golden Chain he is definitely notable, but this article needs some references.Editor2020 (talk) 01:58, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit

Please edit the following:

His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei. His Highness Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta and several members of Malaysia's royal families, including His Highness Prince Raja Dato' Seri Ashman Shah have taken initiation into the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order at his hand.

Value latent language should be avoided on an academic website such as this. There is no such person or thing called "his majesty" or "highness" or "prince". Furthermore, royal titles are somewhat controversial and forbidden in Islam, even though the usage of these terms/concepts frequently occurs in many places around the world.

I'm sure Sheikh Nazim would agree the only thing that truly deserves to be called majestic or royal, is the One. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.80.97.19 (talk) 06:14, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions

It would be good to show some of the negative publicity to get the correct image of nazim due to the fact a very large population of the muslim world consider him to be heretic — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.236.100 (talk) 05:55, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Both Rumi and Jilani?

Abdul Qadir Jilani was culturally Persian but racially Arab, while Rumi was culturally and racially Tajik Persian. Rumi was not a descendant of Jilani, so if the subject of this article is a descendant of both as claimed then it would have to be from the two different sides of his family. Haqqani, however, is a Turkish Cypriot.

It's theoretically possible that he could be the descendant of both, but I am skeptical per WP:QUESTIONABLE. The given source is Hisham Kabbani, a follower of Haqqani who said he became a spiritual leader after the prophet Muhammad called him on the phone and told him to. Given the heavy focus of lineage and familial ties in Sufism, it's within the realm of possibility that the claim is apocryphal or merely an embellishment. Until a second source can be found, his lineage really shouldn't be stated as absolute fact but rather as Kabbani's personal view. MezzoMezzo (talk) 03:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

User:MezzoMezzo, I've added a second source. Does that suffice? I'm very new to Wikipedia, and I actually made the edit before looking at the talk page. The last time I do that I hope. There is no source at present that questions that at least Haqqani himself traced his lineage as such. Is that enough for us to at least put the attribution in his mouth rather than only that of his follower?Bapehu (talk) 14:01, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Fake Gurdjieff story

There seems to be some attempt to spread the false story that Haqqani was a teacher and associate of G.I.Gurdjieff. A similar falsity is spread by the Haqqanis which say that Haqqani "was present during the meetings of his shaykh with Gurdjieff which led to the formation of the Gurdjieff spiritual movement and the Enneagram." This is a chronological absurdity. Haqqani was born in 1922 and met his his teacher, Shaykh Abdullah Daghestani, for the first time in 1945. Gurdjieff started teaching his system in Russia c. 1914 and spent all his time in Europe, England and America after 1922; he died in 1949. Haqqani would never have met him. These stories seem to be based on an unsubstantiated account found in a book that came out in 1995 written by Haqqani's deputy, Sheikh Kabbani-- not an objective source-- which claims that in 1920, Gurdjieff, while temporarily living in Turkey, visited Sheikh Sharafuddin Daghestani, who was the teacher of Sheikh Abdullah Daghestani. The two of them supposedly met with Gurdjieff at that time, before Haqqani was even born. Later, in the 1950's, years after Gurdjieff's death, J.G. Bennett met with Abdullah Daghestani in Damascus, a meeting described in Bennett's book Witness. Neither Sheikh Haqqani nor the supposed 1920 meeting between Gurdjieff and the two Daghestani Sheikhs are mentioned in Bennett's account. Jlburton (talk) 06:24, 18 May 2014 (UTC)jlburton — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlburton (talk • contribs) 06:17, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Jlburton, your explanation does make sense. Had I been aware of all this, I wouldn't have reverted you like I did. Thanks for clarifying the reasoning, this helps to improve the article. MezzoMezzo (talk) 03:59, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Jlburton What is your source for the quote attributed to the Haqqani's above? "was present during the meetings of his shaykh with Gurdjieff which led to the formation of the Gurdjieff spiritual movement and the Enneagram." Bapehu (talk) 17:32, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Inclusion in The 500 Most Influential Muslims

Haqqani was named among the world's top 50 most influential muslims in every year of this annual publication prior to his death in 2014, i.e. 2009:49th, 2010:49th, 2011:48th, 2012:45th, and 2013:42nd. The individual publications are available in pdf form behind a email gateway on the website I've referenced. Is that sufficient reference or do I need to go and refer to each annual pdf as its own physical book? Thanks in advance for your patience. Bapehu (talk) 13:43, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@Bapehu:, each individual reference is a lot of work for a point which I don't think anyone will dispute. If someone wants to dig up all the various references than fine, but that probably isn't necessary. MezzoMezzo (talk) 03:28, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Biography of a Living Person?

Dear User:GimliDotNet and all: The WP:BLP guideline clearly states 4.5.1 that the policy also applies to the recently deceased. Haqqani passed away in May of this year. Why would we not apply BLP? I am a newby and trying to understand the criteria. Thanks. Bapehu (talk) 21:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

That policy relates to particularly contentious information, the removed information was not particularly contentious. GimliDotNet ^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 21:55, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

User:GimliDotNet I'm not sure. This source of questionable reliability, esp. for quotations of the subject, is putting in subjects mouth that he has made repeated specific predictions which have failed. Source says that subject himself sources these predictions to Muslim prophet Muhammad. This is particularly contentious because this subjects noteworthiness is based on his position as a Muslim cleric. The clear implication is that he is that this Muslim cleric would in effect attribute a lie to the central figure of the religion, its prophet Muhammad. Is this not particularly contentious? User: MezzoMezzo: care to weigh-in? Bapehu (talk) 03:38, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

The subject of the article is dead, so BLP doesn't apply. MezzoMezzo (talk) 03:55, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Naming convention in the article subject "Shaykh Nazim" vs "Haqqani" vs "Adil"

I'm intending to change the naming convention used in this article. The sources do not indicate that subject's surname is Haqqani. Rather, it is "Adil". "al Haqqani" appears an honorific he acquired at some point. The various academic secondary source material I have available, which I will be adding to the article, refers to him throughout as "Shaykh Nazim". As per the exception to WP:Honorific, he should be referred throughout the article as "Shaykh Nazim" like "Mother Theresa" or "Father Coughlin". i.e. He certainly appears to be much better known as "Shaykh Nazim" than "Haqqani" (I can find no source that uses this convention over "Shaykh Nazim", save WP) or "Adil" (his true surname). Bapehu (talk) 22:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

According to WP:HONORIFIC, the exception does depend on how sources refer to the subject. We still need to look more closely at that, though; do the sources refer to the subject as such or not? I would prefer to see that demonstrated before jumping to an exception rather than sticking with a general rule. MezzoMezzo (talk) 04:00, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Cleanup proposal

Issues: Lead includes information not in the body and doesn't follow WP:MoS. Although there is ample secondary sources from academic literature on this subject, they are not included. The article as a whole reads more like the ruins of edit battles between his followers and detractors (who have not been following WP guidelines and failed to source properly), and more experienced WP editors who step in and remove poorly sourced material. The end result is an article lacking cohesion with an unbalanced treatment of the subject: e.g. he was notable enough to be regularly counted among the 50 most influential Muslims in the world, but the article doesn't really tell us why. Bapehu (talk) 23:41, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

New section: International mission

I've renamed "Travels abroad" as international mission. This tries to capture one of the main features of the subject discussed in the source material: his remarkable, for a sufi shaykh, trans-national appeal. He's from the Turkish speaking world. He then moves to Syria to live with his murshid, serving as his entree into the greater Arabic context. Upon his murshid's passing, he becomes the murshid of the sufi order and begins spending several months each year in London, England, which the sources describe as his key move to not just the English context but the greater European context, especially in Germany. From 1973, he is described as having two headquarters: London and Damascus (later Cyprus). See the Boettcher source. At present, the key London connection is absent from the wikipedia article and must be added. From 1990 on, he begins travelling more extensively in both the US and the greater Muslim world (e.g. Caucasus, Central Asia, South Africa).

The relevance of including detailed information about his travels is that he was building the sufi network. It is noteworthy because it is exceptional historically for Sufi shaykhs and because he was reconnecting with other branches of the historic Naqshbandi tariqa. This is all in Boettcher.

Boettcher also is also seems a very good source for biography where she draws broadly from the available primary sources, trying to resolve contradictory information across sources where it appears, and getting into the biography vs hagiography discussion. Bapehu (talk) 03:27, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

@Bapehu:, this is too much. When it comes to controversial topics - and Haqqani is controversial due to weird disputes within his group which pop up here every few months - it's better to only discuss one proposed change at a time, and only to move on to a new one after consensus has been achieved for sure. An example of this is Talk:Qamaruzzaman Azmi; I would post a proposal, then wait for discussion. If someone responded, we worked things out. If nobody responded after three days, I would carry on. I would not open a new proposal until the previous one had been resolved. It's much better and easier to manage that way, and even though it's more time consuming it also cements said changes more firmly because it demonstrates that any and all disputes have been resolved (or never existed in the first place). MezzoMezzo (talk) 04:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

{{User:MezzoMezzo]] Got it. Thanks.

Predictions section source problems - POV and SPS

This section is made up of quotes attributed to Shaykh Nazim. The sole source for this section is Vadillo, a secondary source that is clearly polemical towards Nazim, i.e. title of book is "Esoteric Deviation in Islam" of of which Nazim is supposed to be a prime example. I cannot find a single 3rd party review of this book, save for two anonymous forum postings.

Moreover, it's an weighty attribution. Vadillo is putting in subject's mouth that he has made repeated specific predictions which have failed. Source says that subject himself sources these predictions to Muslim prophet Muhammad. This is particularly contentious because this subject's noteworthiness is based on his position as a Muslim cleric. The clear implication is that he is that this Muslim cleric would in effect attribute a lie to the central figure of the religion, its prophet Muhammad. I think this qualifies as {{WP:EXCEPTIONAL]].

Additionally, the Vadillo source appears to be SPS. I can find no reference to Madina House publisher except for publications of Murabitun World Movement. Vadillo appears to be a principal of this organization.