Proposal: Let's not have an "Is X halal?" tag.

TL;DR: As a solution to the halal/haram family of tags problem, I (tentatively) propose we burninate/blacklist all of the tags: halal, haram, halal-haram, haram-halal, halal-consumer, sin, sin-or-not, islamic-ruling.

It's a big change, so it needs careful thought, so I post this for voting and feedback. I do some "sanity checks" below, which has increased my confidence in this possibility.

Justification

1. Tags should indicate what a question is about. Questions like Is X halal? or Is X permissible? are about X, and should be tagged x. Questions that are actually about "halal" or "sin" can instead be tagged sharia and fiqh.

2. It feels like a meta tag for two reasons, both listed on The Death of Meta Tags, Jeff Atwood, 2010:

3. If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags ... tell you nothing at all about the content of the question.

   A question tagged is-x-halal (or some variant) still needs to be tagged x.

4. The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question. They describe some other aspect of the question, like ... what “kind” of question it is

5. The title of the question should contain something equivalent to "Is X halal?" How this would work:

6. Title: Sharing videos in website is halal or haram? can be tagged internet (and maybe we need a video tag too).

7. Title: Is arbitrage betting haram? can be tagged gambling

8. Title: Are video games permissible? can be tagged software

9. Title: https://islam.stackexchange.com/q/31207/17163 can be tagged work cosmetics

10. The halal-haram tag is a compound tag, i.e., is has the form x-y where x and y are also tags.

Compound tags are going to lead to confusion as to which of the three tags x-y, x, and y to use. Users might simply pick some random subset of the three. (In the haram-halal case, we also have y-x too!)

5. It's impractical. These tags desperately need work, and once we get them working, they will require maintenance. If this is not done, they'll just remain (or return to) being a big and accumulating mess.

6. There's minor differences in phrasing which perhaps led to the many variants of the tag:

7. Is X halal? E.g. https://islam.stackexchange.com/q/37497/17163

8. Is X permissible? E.g. Is it permissible for a girl to reject a proposal?

9. Is X a sin? E.g. Is it a sin to accept e.g. food from a relative who supports herself using riba?

10. What is the ruling concerning X? E.g. What is ruling for Blasphemy in Islam?

Sanity check 1: random questions

Here's 5 randomly generated questions generated by DiceStack for various tags:

• halal-haram:

1. Can a Muslim cook pork? can be tagged pork food and we could create a cooking if desired

2. Working in Club as a waiter is haram or halal? can be tagged work alcohol gambling

3. Is getting unauthorized discounts on store products haraam? seems fine tagged theft, but maybe something like (not yet existent) shopping might also be useful

4. Does food need a halal certification? seems fine tagged food, but might be better off with the (not yet existent) halal-certification or dietry-laws

5. Is this allowed to bribe when I am forced? should have a useful tag created, e.g., bribery

• halal:

1. Is it permissible to eat meat in Western restaurants given that it is permissible to eat meat from People of the Book? seems fine with food and meat; it might benefit from non-muslim-countries (actually, I just went ahead and edited the tags)

2. Is there a concept of "nullification" of forbidden substances in Halal dietary laws? has the useful tags food and judaism, could benefit from comparative-religions and the (not yet existent) dietry-laws

3. Is it halal to buy and drink artificial juices? currently has the tags halal halal-haram haram-halal; it should be tagged food and the (not yet existent) dietry-laws

4. https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/35373/solutions-to-ribaa seems adequately tagged riba and mortgage

5. Is my father's irrational rejection of my marriage proposal enough of an excuse to have my brother be my wali? can be tagged nikah and maybe also wali parents

• islamic-ruling:

1. Are monthly payments an Islamically acceptable way to receive money for your goods? is fine tagged finance, would benefit from business, and it looks like it's after a sunni opinion

2. Alcohol in perfumes? could use the obvious tag alcohol and the (not yet existing) perfume.

3. Is there philosophical reason for unclean things (nejasat) in Islam? is fine tagged islamic-philosophy taharah najis

4. What is the difference between Hadd and Qisas? could be tagged hadd punishment and (the not yet existent) qisas and maybe one of sharia and fiqh

5. If a non-Muslim curses a Muslim, will the Muslim's life be in turmoil? it seems curse is sufficient.

In these examples, it seems possible to give adequate tags without using an "Is X halal?" tag.

Sanity check 2: meta.SE criteria

From the top answer (by Shog9 ♦) to meta.StackExchange question When to burninate:

1. Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous? Virtually no and No!!! (E.g. using halal-haram, etc., was defined here When to use haram and halal-haram tags?, but not used like that)

2. Is the concept described even on-topic for the site? Yes.

3. Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post? Not really, the question is (or should be) part of the title.

4. Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts? Yes.

and also

Sometimes, tags get in the way, add confusion, start fights, take the place of better tags... -- Shog9 ♦

These tags seem to be getting in the way more than helping.

There's some yesses there.

Sanity check 3: question quality

Bad tags are often harbingers of bad questions. -- Shog9 ♦

I suppose the logic is "effortless tags" correspond to "effortless questions". Here's some data:

tag            % Q's with
               score >= 3

sin               47%
fiqh              47%
sharia            45%
sin-or-not        43%
halal-haram       37%
islamic-ruling    35%
haram             34%
halal-consumer    32%
halal             29%
haram-halal       26%

history           50%
jamaat            49%
women             46%
food              41%
nikah             39%

There seems to be some trend there, but not that strong (maybe they were deleted though; or perhaps this is more about poorly written questions). Nevertheless, there's examples of bad questions searching for [halal-haram] score:0 is:question. (I just downvoted a whole bunch of these; they should be automatically deleted.)

Prior meta posts

• When to use haram and halal-haram tags?
• How should we tidy up the halal/haram family of tags?
• Tags related to Halal-Haram should be merged

and also

• Removing some tags
• List of tag synonyms and tags to be burninated or removed
• Synonyms and Merges