Today, we shall discuss a paper that followed an uninformed keywords strategy to identify the text which led to wrong and out of context text selection. The title of the article is “Uncovering the Muslim leisure tourists’ motivation to travel domestically – do gender and generation matters?” (The title is also grammatically incorrect). This article was published in the “Tourism and Hospitality Management” journal published by Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management, University of Rijeka, Croatia. The journal is indexed/abstracted by, inter alia, Emerging Sources Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics), Scopus (Q3), Cabell’s Directories, DOAJ.

This article explored the impact of various study variables on the tour motivation of local Muslim leisure tourists (MLTs). To support their conjectures on MLTs, the authors tried to find verses from the Holy Quran using standard “keywords strategy”. The authors mention on page 214:

A search involving the terms “travel” and “traveller” on the Holy Book of Al-Quran results into about 38 verses, which either contain touring, its importance or criticism about those who are not travelling (Refer to Appendix 1). This implies that the act of travelling is indeed permissible and cultivatable among Muslims (p. 214).

The results of keywords search in the English translation of the Holy Quran show that the authors found 38 verses where the word “travel” or “traveller” was mentioned. In the below Table we provide our analysis of the identified 38 verses. Our readers will definitely enjoy and will be flabbergasted.

No.	Verse	Our Analysis
1	Surah Al-Baqara, 273	This verse talks about giving charity to poor people who cannot make their earnings by conducting business activities.
2	Surah Al-Imran, 137	This verse suggests to go to foreign regions to see the fate of the deniers/nonbelievers.
3	Surah An-Nisa, 43	This verse talks about cleaning principles.
4	Surah An-Nisa, 101	This verse talks about shortening of prayers in Jihad.
5	Surah Al-Maida, 106	This verse recommends the significance of testament and witnesses before death of a person.
6	Surah At-Tawba, 1	This verse doesn’t deal with travel at all.
7	Surah At-Tawba, 2	This verse is addressing non-Muslims and it doesn't recommend to travel and tour instead a near punishment to non-Muslims is indicated.
8	Surah Yusuf, 109	This verse talks about travel to see fate of foreign nations of nonbelievers who were destroyed by Allah.
9	Surah Al-Hijr, 65	This verse mentions the order of Allah given to Prophet Lot (PBUH) to leave the area and don't look back, so that his nation can be destroyed as punishment.
10	Surah An-Nahl, 36	This verse suggests to go to foreign regions to see the fate of the deniers/nonbelievers.
11	Surah An-Nahl, 46	This verse talks about punishment to nonbelievers.
12	Surah An-Nahl, 69	This verse talks about Honey Bee and production of honey.
13	Surah An-Nahl, 80	This verse talks about importance of human homes.
14	Surah Ta Ha, 77	This verse addresses Prophet Moses (PBUH) ordering him how to get himself and his followers saved in water during exodus.
15	Surah Al-Hajj, 46	This verse talks about non-believers who don’t get the lesson from previous nations who were destroyed by Allah.
16	Surah Ash-Shu’ara, 52	This verse talks about Allah's order to Prophet Moses (PBUH) to leave the place with his followers because Pharaoh will chase them to kill.
17	Surah Al-Ankabut, 20	This verse instructs nonbelievers to go to different geo-locations to observe how Allah originated the creation.
18	Surah Ar-Rum, 9	This verse suggests to learn lesson from deniers/nonbelievers because they got divine punishment.
19	Surah Ar-Rum, 42	This verse talks about learning lesson from infidels, and nonbelievers.
20	Surah Saba, 18	This verse talks about nonbelievers of Al-Sheba.
21	Surah Fatir, 44	This verse suggests to seek lesson from deniers/nonbelievers, who were divinely punished, belonged to foreign regions.
22	Surah Ghafir, 21	This verse suggests to seek lesson from deniers/nonbelievers who were divinely punished and destroyed, belonged to foreign regions.
23	Surah Ghafir, 82	This verse suggests to seek lesson from deniers/nonbelievers, who were divinely punished and destroyed, belonged to foreign regions.
24	Surah Muhammad, 10	This verse suggests to seek lesson from deniers/nonbelievers, who were divinely punished, belonged to foreign regions.
25	Surah Al-Muzzammil, 20	A partial topic of travel to earn bread and butter and to conduct Jihad is there in this verse.
26	Surah Al-Baqara, 177	This verse instructs to give charity to many categories of people, among them one category is needy travellers.
27	Surah Al-Baqara, 215	This verse talks to give money to poor and need in which one needy is a person who lost their money during travel and have no money to eat.
28	Surah An-Nisa, 36	This verse guides to be kind to certain categories of people. One category of is persons who lost their money during travel and have no money to eat.
29	Surah Al-Ma’ida, 96	This verse talks about what is prohibited or allowed to eat during pilgrimage in Mecca.
30	Surah Al-Anfal, 41	This verse clears how to distribute booty. One person who can be given from booty is a person who is traveling to his destination and loses his money.
31	Surah At-Tawba, 60	This verse talks to give money to poor and needy in which one needy is a person who lost their money during travel and have no money to eat.
32	Surah Yusuf, 10	These are the suggestions given by brothers of Prophet Joseph (PBUH) that what we should do instead of killing him.
33	Surah Al-Isra, 26	This verse talks about giving to poor.
34	Surah Al-Rum, 38	This verse talks about giving to poor.
35	Surah Al-Waqi’a, 71	The verse indicates benefits of fire and wood for general people and people who travel for earning or purposeful tasks.
36	Surah Al-Waqi’a, 72	The verse indicates benefits of fire and wood for general people and people who travel for earning or purposeful tasks.
37	Surah Al-Waqi’a, 73	The verse indicates benefits of fire and wood for general people and people who travel for earning or purposeful tasks.
38	Surah Al-Hashr, 7	This verse clears how to distribute booty. One person who can be given from booty is a person who is traveling to his destination and loses his money.

Our analysis, in the above Table, shows that none of the identified verses support the stance of the authors that MLTs is backed by the Holy Quran. In fact, this was a wrong assertion. The Holy Quran doesn’t use the Arabic word that can be translated as “Leisure” even a single time. The permissibility of the act of traveling is a different thing, but one cannot root this act to justify "Leisure Domestic Tour" using the holy verses of the Quran.

Our readers can observe that the authors of this paper identified the verses from the Holy Quran that are completely irrelevant to the context of this study. For instance, how the exodus of Moses (PBUH), punishment to the non-believers, principles of cleaning, giving to poor, significance of testament, sentence to infidels etc. could justify rationale or motivation to MLTs or leisure domestic travel. Strangely, the authors of this article also see honey bees and the honey production as a motivation to MLTs.

In our above analysis, we clearly determine that the authors used uninformed keywords strategy to identify the verses and ended up in total out of context findings. The following are the reasons of this serious error:

1. Because the authors themselves were non-Muslims, therefore, they had no idea how to find correct text from the Holy Quran. They thought that the Quranic text and the text of the published articles or books are comparable and can be extracted using standard keywords strategy. However, they completely failed to identify even a single verse justifying their stance on MLTs. The authors should have contacted an Islamic scholar to help them find scriptural text as per their study context.

2. Authors should understand that there are different types of literature search techniques applicable to different types of literature. The scriptural works are entirely different from research articles and books. Authors should read the scriptures thoroughly under the guidance of a religious scholar to identify qualitative statements aligning to the actual study context.

3. Journals should hire religious scholars to serve as special reviewers so that such types of stern mistakes can be caught and uprooted. Editors of journals publishing religious text in the areas of business and ethics should attend special training to learn proper handling of such manuscripts.

Unfortunately, the editors and reviewers of the journal completely failed to identify these stern mistakes. They should have sent such manuscripts to religious reviewers to verify the credibility and alignment of scriptural texts with the context of the study.

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