Editorial Principles

Description, not advocacy

Revert Way describes what the historical and textual evidence supports; it does not adjudicate theological truth claims, and it does not exist to defend or dispute any religious position. A reader who disagrees with a paper's theological implications should still be able to check every factual and historical claim in it against the sources cited.

Categories are kept separate

Historical evidence, hadith material, Qur'anic text, classical jurisprudence (fiqh), lived culture and modern practice, and scholarly interpretation are five different kinds of material, and they are labeled as such rather than blended into one undifferentiated narrative. A paper that draws on more than one of these categories says explicitly which claims belong to which.

Sourcing diversity

Academic sources are drawn from Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship alike, from scholars working within religious traditions and from secular academics, and from specialists who disagree with one another. A source is not excluded because of the author's religious identity, and it is not included merely because it reaches a convenient conclusion. It is engaged because of the evidence and argument it presents.

Transparency about incomplete work

Some pages on this site are not finished. Those pages are marked as placeholders, plainly and visibly, rather than published as though they were complete. A placeholder page states what it will eventually cover and links to what is currently available on the same subject.

Corrections

Reported errors, factual mistakes, mischaracterized sources, broken citations, are investigated against the original material before any change is made. Once verified, the correction is applied and the page's revision date is updated. Corrections that materially change a paper's conclusion are noted in the text itself, not quietly removed. Readers can report an issue through the contact page.

Editorial independence

Editorial decisions, what to research, how to frame it, and when to publish it, are made against the standards on this page and in our Methodology. They are not made to satisfy an advertiser, a sponsor, or any outside institution.

What we will not publish

• Claims presented as historical fact with no citation to a primary or secondary source.
• A fringe or minority academic position presented as though it were scholarly consensus, or vice versa.
• Theological argument (for or against any tradition) framed as a historical finding.
• A source excluded, or included, because of the religious identity of its author rather than the strength of its scholarship.
• Undisclosed editing of a published claim; corrections are made openly, not silently.

Related standards

For how evidence is sourced and reviewed before publication, see Methodology. For our definitions of primary and secondary sources, confidence levels, and citation format, see Evidence Standards.