Disputed Statements

Saint, Religious Roles & Titles

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Tradition

Currently States The word is applied in English to holy persons of other traditions; that is a habit of the language and not a claim that the categories correspond

According To Cross-tradition

Comparativists differ on whether sainthood is a useful cross-cultural category at all, or whether it imports Latin Christian assumptions about a juridical afterlife status into traditions that have none.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, John Bowker (ed.) tier 1

Saint Yared, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 505

The source calls this a traditional date rather than an independently fixed one.

Source Yared (reference article), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Saint Yared, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 571

The source calls this a traditional date rather than an independently fixed one.

Source Yared (reference article), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Sakshi, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Samkhya treats the witness, purusha, as a permanently real and separate principle whose recognition is itself liberation; Advaita treats the witness stance as a provisional teaching to be seen through rather than a final position.

Source Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume III: Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara and His Pupils, Karl H. Potter (ed.) tier 1

Salafism, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Separation or Divergence

Currently States No separation as a body

Roel Meijer's edited volume Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, Hurst, 2009, brings together specialists on Islamic movements to document that Salafism did not separate from any prior body; it is a reform current within Sunni Islam that calls for a return to the practice of the first generations, the salaf, rather than a schism with its own founding break. The volume's comparative method, reading case studies of Salafi movements and their legal practice across different countries, finds real internal disagreement over whether that stance sits inside or outside the four traditional schools of law: some Salafis reject taqlid, adherence to any school, entirely, while others continue to operate within Hanbali jurisprudence specifically. That disagreement, not any external separation, is what the dispute over its status actually concerns.

Source Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, Roel Meijer (ed.) tier 1

Salafism, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Separation or Divergence

Currently States Salafism is a current within Sunni Islam calling for a return to the practice of the first generations

Roel Meijer's edited volume Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, Hurst, 2009, brings together specialists on Islamic movements to document that Salafism did not separate from any prior body; it is a reform current within Sunni Islam that calls for a return to the practice of the first generations, the salaf, rather than a schism with its own founding break. The volume's comparative method, reading case studies of Salafi movements and their legal practice across different countries, finds real internal disagreement over whether that stance sits inside or outside the four traditional schools of law: some Salafis reject taqlid, adherence to any school, entirely, while others continue to operate within Hanbali jurisprudence specifically. That disagreement, not any external separation, is what the dispute over its status actually concerns.

Source Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, Roel Meijer (ed.) tier 1

Salafism, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Separation or Divergence

Currently States Whether it stands inside or outside the four schools of law is disputed within it

Roel Meijer's edited volume Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, Hurst, 2009, brings together specialists on Islamic movements to document that Salafism did not separate from any prior body; it is a reform current within Sunni Islam that calls for a return to the practice of the first generations, the salaf, rather than a schism with its own founding break. The volume's comparative method, reading case studies of Salafi movements and their legal practice across different countries, finds real internal disagreement over whether that stance sits inside or outside the four traditional schools of law: some Salafis reject taqlid, adherence to any school, entirely, while others continue to operate within Hanbali jurisprudence specifically. That disagreement, not any external separation, is what the dispute over its status actually concerns.

Source Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, Roel Meijer (ed.) tier 1

Salafistes (2016), Screen Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Reception

Currently States The film's French release provoked a public censorship debate: the Culture Ministry argued it risked providing an unfiltered platform for jihadist messaging, and the national film classification body imposed a rare over-eighteen rating rather than a wider ban, a compromise that satisfied neither side fully. Some critics, including the director Claude Lanzmann, praised it as showing daily life under jihadist rule in a way no book or specialist commentary could match; others, examined directly in Maria Flood's peer reviewed study of the film's reception, argued that presenting jihadist subjects largely without critical commentary risked the film being read, or misread, as representative of the wider Salafi movement rather than of the violent minority it actually filmed.

Source Salafistes (Wikipedia and Studies in French Cinema), Wikipedia contributors; Maria Flood, Studies in French Cinema tier 2

Salmon, Animals & Totems

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States The words spirit animal and totem are used in popular Western practice for a personal animal ally. Native scholars and communities object to both usages, on the ground that they take the vocabulary and the authority of particular Indigenous traditions and apply them to a generic and commercial practice.

Suzanne Owen's The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality (Continuum, 2008) documents the objection Indigenous communities in North America raise, ongoing and in the present tense, against the commercial "spirit animal" genre. Owen's study examines how the practice borrows specific Indigenous terms and claimed lineages, presenting them as licensing a service sold to outside customers, and sets that use against the communities' own accounts of what those terms and practices mean within their traditions. What is disputed, on Owen's reading, is not that people generally feel a kinship with animals, a widely attested feeling that belongs to no one tradition, but the specific commercial borrowing of Indigenous vocabulary and claimed authority. The atlas records the animal, records that the modern commercial practice exists, and records that this documented objection is made, without adjudicating between the parties.

Source The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality, Suzanne Owen tier 1

Salvation, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2005) documents that within Christianity the disputes over salvation concern mechanism and scope: whether it is by faith alone or by faith formed in love, whether it can be lost, and whether it is offered to all or only to the elect. Universalism, the position that all are finally saved, has been held by a minority throughout Christian history, was associated with the third century theologian Origen, was condemned in the sixth century in the form attributed to him, and has recovered a measure of respectability in modern theology without becoming the teaching of any large body, which is why the question is recorded as unsettled rather than resolved.

Source Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.) tier 1

Salvation Through the Shed Blood, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether Mithraism promised salvation at all. The evidence is a single damaged painted line in the mithraeum under Santa Prisca in Rome, restored by its excavators as thanking the god for having saved by shed blood. The restoration supplies missing letters, the blood may be the bull and may not, and even on the most favourable reading the line says nothing about what an initiate was saved from or for.

Source The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries, Manfred Clauss tier 1

Salvation Through the Shed Blood, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within the tradition

Manfred Clauss's The Roman Cult of Mithras (2000) examines the sole surviving evidence for a Mithraic soteriological promise of salvation through shed blood: a single damaged painted inscription in the Mithraeum beneath the church of Santa Prisca in Rome. Clauss's method is epigraphic, reconstructing the damaged Latin text letter by letter from the surviving paint traces, and the restoration supplying words about being saved by shed blood, sanguine fuso, is accepted by some scholars working from the same damaged inscription and held unproven by others, since the missing letters could be filled a different way consistent with the surviving strokes.

Source The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries, Manfred Clauss tier 1

Salve Regina, Prayers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Traditionally ascribed to Hermann of Reichenau, known as Hermannus Contractus, an eleventh century monk and scholar who worked from the Benedictine monastery on Reichenau despite a severe physical disability from birth. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) records the ascription as uncertain, with other candidates including Adhemar of Le Puy also proposed and no attribution settled among scholars.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) examined the traditional ascription of this Marian antiphon to Hermann of Reichenau, known as Hermannus Contractus, an eleventh century monk of the Reichenau monastery who worked despite a severe physical disability from birth. Weighing that tradition against the other candidate proposed, Adhemar of Le Puy, it finds no attribution settled among scholars and records the ascription as uncertain rather than resolved.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Sama: Music and Listening Carry the Seeker Toward God, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Its defenders hold that the ear can reach what argument cannot and that the practice is disciplined by the state of the listener rather than by the sound; its opponents hold that music is at best a distraction and at worst forbidden. The argument runs through the whole history of Sufism and was conducted in writing by figures on both sides.

Sama, listening, names the use of sung poetry and music, most famously in the Mevlevi turning ceremony, as a means toward spiritual realisation, and is held above all by the Chishti order along with many orders across South Asia, North Africa and Anatolia. Annemarie Schimmel's standard survey of Sufism records that the practice has been argued over throughout the whole history of Sufism, with defenders holding that the ear can reach toward God what discursive argument cannot, and that the practice is disciplined by the spiritual state of the listener rather than by the sound itself, so that the same music that edifies one listener could be idle amusement for another. Opponents, including jurists outside the Sufi orders and Sufis within stricter lineages, hold that music is at best a distraction from remembrance of God and at worst categorically forbidden regardless of the listener's state. Figures on both sides conducted the argument in writing across the centuries, and it has not been settled because it turns on whether a practice's permissibility can depend on the internal state of the person doing it, a question jurisprudence and mystical theology answer differently.

Source Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Annemarie Schimmel tier 1

Samaritan's Purse, Organizations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Institutional Wealth or Finances

Currently States Samaritan's Purse, the Christian relief organization led by Franklin Graham, reported total revenue of over 1 billion dollars and total spending of about 715 million dollars for its 2021 fiscal year, ending the year with net assets exceeding 1.2 billion dollars, nearly half of it held in cash and cash equivalents, following a 2020 fiscal year in which it reported 894 million dollars in revenue against 670 million dollars in spending, a surplus of about 224 million dollars. These figures, drawn from the organization's own IRS Form 990 filings, were reported and contextualized by The Roys Report, a religion-accountability news outlet, in a 29 June 2022 article by Sarah Einselen.

Two camps read the same filed numbers differently. The Roys Report's investigative account frames the scale of Samaritan's Purse's accumulated surplus and reserves, over 1.2 billion dollars in net assets against roughly 715 million dollars in annual spending, as a red flag worth public scrutiny for a relief charity funded by disaster-response appeals. Samaritan's Purse itself, through chief operating officer Ron Wilcox quoted in the same piece, holds that large reserves reflect responsible stewardship for a global relief operation that may work in a disaster region for years or decades, and that the three to six month operating reserve standard suited to other nonprofits would be irresponsible for its mission. Both camps agree on the underlying Form 990 figures; they disagree on whether the reserve level itself is a defensible operating posture or an accountability concern.

Source Samaritan's Purse Amasses Over $1 Billion in Assets, Raising Red Flags (The Roys Report, 2022), Sarah Einselen tier 2

Samarkand Kufic Quran, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Date Attributed

Currently States Traditionally the caliph Uthman, c. 651 CE

Efim A. Rezvan's The Quran of Uthman (St. Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara, Tashkent) (Instituto per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 2004) examines the Samarkand Kufic Quran manuscript against the tradition attributing it to the caliph Uthman's seventh century recension. Rezvan's method combines comparative palaeography of the Kufic script forms with radiocarbon dating of the parchment, and both lines of evidence date the manuscript to a period later than Uthman's own seventh century lifetime, contradicting the traditional attribution on independent grounds.

Source The Quran of Uthman (St. Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara, Tashkent), Efim A. Rezvan tier 1

Samarkand Kufic Quran, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Radiocarbon Date

Currently States 8th-9th century CE (95% intervals within c. 775-995)

Efim A. Rezvan's study The Quran of Uthman, published in Manuscripta Orientalia, Thesa, St Petersburg, 2004, examined the manuscript's parchment and Kufic script through radiocarbon testing and comparative palaeography against other dated early Quranic exemplars. That combined dating places the manuscript's production later than the mid-seventh century reign of the caliph Uthman, to whom the tradition directly attributes it, which is why Rezvan's finding disputes the traditional attribution rather than confirming it.

Source The Quran of Uthman (St. Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara, Tashkent), Efim A. Rezvan tier 1

Samarkand Kufic Quran, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Radiocarbon Date

Currently States A tested folio dated c. 795-855

Efim A. Rezvan's study The Quran of Uthman, published in Manuscripta Orientalia, Thesa, St Petersburg, 2004, examined the manuscript's parchment and Kufic script through radiocarbon testing and comparative palaeography against other dated early Quranic exemplars. That combined dating places the manuscript's production later than the mid-seventh century reign of the caliph Uthman, to whom the tradition directly attributes it, which is why Rezvan's finding disputes the traditional attribution rather than confirming it.

Source The Quran of Uthman (St. Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara, Tashkent), Efim A. Rezvan tier 1

Samekh ס, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Samekh ס, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1