What guidelines should we impose on questions to ensure quality?

Question

I have noticed a trend in the posts on this site, where a question is asked under the (apparently) implicit assumption that all Muslims follow a single unified doctrine called "Islam."

In a lot of cases, this would just result in a slough of answers from various schools, which may or may not be of any use to the questioner. The questioner is of course entitled to narrow the scope of his question to a particular school or interpretation; we have touched on this problem already with the whole Shia-Sunni fiasco.

However, I feel that the fundamental problem runs deeper than that.

The fact is, although we all call ourselves Muslim, there isn't really one thing we can point to and say "This is Islam." Differences of opinion abound. Even the Qur'an itself, the one primary source that Muslims (almost) unanimously accept as God's own Truth, is not free from conflicting interpretations ("And no one knows its [true] interpretation except Allah.")

This point was really driven home with the original version of this post. The question itself is definitely on-topic, but it was quite literally not answerable until the questioner clarified that it was regarding Muslim women who wear the veil.

Is it the questioner's fault? Probably not; there is a lot of media attention to the "Islam = Veil" perspective, it's very easy to think that the religion itself mandates the veil. However, the fact is, there is no consensus to that; some scholars say it's mandatory, some say it's recommended, some say it's optional, some say it's nothing.

Before the veil clarification, I could off the top of my head come up with three potential reasons that the question would even need to be asked. Without knowing exactly where the question was coming from, there was a 2/3 chance (yay statistics) of answering the wrong question entirely.

This is not a good thing. At all.

So the question I lay forth is this: What guidelines should we impose on questions to ensure they're at an acceptable (and answerable) level of quality?

Answer 1

As there is no guarantee that any two Muslims in a room will ever agree on anything, I propose that any implicit assumptions be made explicit. When asking a question, if an assumption is fundamental to why the question is even being asked, or to the answers expected, it should be spelled out.

For example, if a question is asked based on…

• …such-and-such an interpretation being true, mention the interpretation.
• …such-and-such a hadith being authentic, mention the hadith.
• …such-and-such an action being prohibited, mention the prohibition.
• …such-and-such a school of fiqh being valid, mention the school.

And so on. You get the picture.

There should always be some sort of context whence a question came; legitimate questions don't tend to form in a vacuum. Making these assumptions explicit in the question, and requiring answers to follow from the same assumptions, would serve the dual-purpose of helping the readers know exactly what is being asked, and narrowing the focus for potential answers.

Answer 2

Why not allowing answers from whatever dozens of sects there are out there? I think this adds to the value of the site as it broadens our perspective to the diversity of juridical/interpretive differences among schools.

Muslims following a sect need to come out of their closet and learn about the myriad of different interpretations/narratives/rulings by different schools. We should recognize in practice that 'Islam' is not a straightforward easy-to-study-and-fathom topic. Muslims should grow to recognize this, especially nowadays that there seems to be a prevalent culture of arbitrary ruling-happy fatwas among Muslims.