I have two major points in the following: - As religions are disputed as fact, articles about them should conform to the same style guidelines as articles about fiction. - These style guidelines can be cumbersome and suffocating for articles, and disclaimers might be a better way to preserve NPOV.
As a (once) active participant in WikiProject Stargate, which tries to improve Wikipedia's coverage of articles related to the science-fiction media franchise Stargate, I am all too aware of the importance of contextual tone when writing about what is non-factual. It's not correct in an encyclopedia to have an article about a fictional character, e.g. "Sokar", and then state that "Sokar took over the universe in 2003." The article should come from the perspective of "Sokar is a character from the science-fiction series Stargate..... .....and during a major story arc written by Martin Gero spanning 3 episodes, the character took over the universe."
It is clear why this kind of clarification is needed. Sokar has not taken over the universe. If the claims were about "Jack Bauer" "defeating terrorists" it would sound more plausible of course: it is imperative to clearly mark what is fact and fiction! It is a fact that "24", the fiction, depicts certain fictional events.
Most articles do this to a fair extent already. However, I am concerned that the focus for the Writing About Fiction guidelines is only on things like Stargate. Religions apply to. Seen as these are disputed as fact, statements cannot read "If the pilgrim dies before entering Mecca, their soul is sent into limbo, where Allah will judge them by the purity of their soul and their lifetime devotion to Islam and the words of Muhammad" (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj). It is not encyclopedic fact that people who've never been to the Hajj will have their souls sent to limbo for Islamic judgment. This needs to be clarified as "Muslims believe that..."
It's either all or none: either fiction and religion articles must both contain these clarifications, or none. And I think none might actually be easier:
There are some types of articles (or just sections in articles) that by their very nature are going to be 95% a documentation of non-factual things. These include articles (or sections) about plots or religions, etc., etc. Seen as there are so many articles/sections of this type, and prepending every line with "It is believed..." or "It was depicted..." can suffocate content, I was wondering if it might not be better to just have a disclaimer template? Something to place at the top of a section, reading "The following section discusses fictional events as depicted in [Stargate]" or "The following section discusses the beliefs and opinions held by [Muslims]." The template can be taken as temporary until someone rewords the section purely factually.