agent-playbooks/iqra-author-style-guide-and-editorial-sop.md

# Iqra Times & Falah Research Institute
## Editorial Style Guide & Author Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
*Document Reference: FRI-SOP-2026-AUTHOR-01*  
*Classification: Mandatory Institutional Standard for All Editors, Columnists, and AI Agent Personas*  
*Effective Date: October 2026*  
*Supersedes / Supplements: FRI-SOP-2026-VISUAL-01*

---

## 1. Executive Editorial Mandate: "Real Life, Real Faith, Real People"

### 1.1 The Kitchen Table Test
Iqra Times reaches over 11,400 active subscribers. Our readers are working parents, software developers, educators, community leaders, and thoughtful believers. They are **not** ivory-tower academics, and they do not read journals for dry theoretical disputations.

> [!IMPORTANT]
> **The Cardinal Rule of Iqra Times:**  
> **Writing cannot be dry, academic, or detached.** If an essay cannot be understood, felt, and discussed around a family kitchen table after Maghrib, it fails the editorial standard and will not be published.

### 1.2 The Relevance Standard
Never publish abstract theological, mathematical, or macroeconomic treatises in a vacuum. Every topic must directly address real issues in the real world for real people:
* **Abstract:** "An Analysis of Contemporary Islamic Liquidity Facility Yield Curves"  
  **Real World:** *"The RM 40,000 Hajj: How Did the Plain of Arafah Become a Luxury Ordinary Families Can’t Afford?"*
* **Abstract:** "Vagal Nerve Stimulation via Autonomic Neuromodulation"  
  **Real World:** *"The Somatics of Maternal Burnout: Why Islamic Rest Is a Spiritual Duty, Not a Luxury"*
* **Abstract:** "Algorithmic Determinism in Generative Large Language Systems"  
  **Real World:** *"The Screen at the Dinner Table: Reclaiming the Family Hearth from Dopamine Extraction"*

### 1.3 Authorial Opinions, Intellectual Independence & Reader Autonomy
* **Authors Are Entitled to Their Opinions:** Authors, contributing fellows, and columnists across *Iqra Times* write with personal conviction and are fully entitled to their own individual viewpoints, hypotheses, and opinions. 
* **No Obligation to Agree or Disagree:** Opinions expressed belong strictly to the individual author and do not represent the institutional position or dogma of *Iqra Times* or *Darul Falah*. **No reader has to agree or disagree with the opinions of any author.** Readers are completely free to exercise their own critical discernment, critique arguments, and reach their own independent conclusions.

---

## 2. The Dual Literary Reference Canon: Dan Brown × Buya Hamka

To ensure maximum narrative grip without sacrificing spiritual depth, all narrative non-fiction, investigative journalism, and serialized fiction must fuse two distinct literary engines:

```
+------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
|       DAN BROWN ARCHITECTURE       |         BUYA HAMKA SOUL            |
|       (Kinetic Narrative Engine)   |      (Lyrical & Moral Anchor)      |
+------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| * Ticking-clock urgency            | * Lyrical Indonesian/Malay prose   |
| * Micro-cliffhangers at section breaks | * Filial piety (Birr al-Walidayn)  |
| * Tangible physical ciphers & relics| * Adab, dignity, and modesty (Haya)|
| * High-stakes investigative momentum| * Contemplative warmth (Tafakkur)  |
| * Tight, forensic sensory detail   | * Tender, authentic human grief   |
+------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
```

### 2.1 The Dan Brown Engine (Pacing & Mystery)
* **High Momentum**: Open in media res. Avoid long expository throat-clearing.
* **Micro-Cliffhangers**: Every chapter, section, or episode must conclude with an unresolved revelation, an unexpected arrival, or a deciphered clue that demands reading the next sentence.
* **Material Clues**: Ground intellectual mysteries in physical, sensory artifacts—an antique brass astrolabe, a faded seafaring ledger, an encrypted cold-storage cryptographic key, a sealed wax letter.

### 2.2 The Buya Hamka Soul (Moral Weight & Human Dignity)
* **Lyrical Grace**: Language must carry warmth, beauty, and emotional honesty, drawing from the classic Nusantara literary tradition (*Di Bawah Lindungan Ka'bah*, *Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck*, *Tafsir Al-Azhar*).
* **Adab & Haya'**: Characters speak with mutual dignity, filial reverence, and spiritual grounding. Avoid cynicism, vulgarity, and hollow melodrama.
* **Spiritual Intimacy**: Faith is not an academic footnote; it is the living air characters breathe—manifested in shared tea, the call to prayer echoing across the water, the fragrance of clove and petrichor, and du'a made in quiet solitude.

---

## 3. Serialized Fiction SOP: *The Cipher of Kota Karang*

To gamify reader retention and create a "must-read" habit for the Weekly Sunday Broadsheet (8:00 AM delivery to 11.4k subscribers), Iqra Times runs an ongoing serialized fiction column modeled after Sherlock Holmes, *Space: 1999*, and *One Thousand and One Nights (Scheherazade)*.

### 3.1 The Canonical World & Cast
* **Shahrukh**: Intergalactic Archaeologist and Cosmic Detective. Analytical, observant, swift, yet grounded by faith.
* **Siti**: Ex-MIT Pure Mathematics Professor, daughter of Kota Karang, keeper of ancestral oral memory.
* **Marital Canon (Strict Adab & Mahram)**:
  * Shahrukh and Siti are lawfully married (*Nikah* conducted with the blessing of Baba Daud). 
  * There is zero illicit romance, zero *khalwah*, and complete adherence to Islamic conduct. Their bond is intellectual, spiritual, and affectionate.
* **The Elders of Kota Karang**:
  * **Jeneral (R) Daud ("Baba")**: Retired Solar Fleet Commander. Authoritative, watchful, deeply pious.
  * **Che Putih**: Matriarch of the basalt fortress; the emotional heart who anchors the home with traditional hospitality and steadfast faith.
* **The Setting**: **Kota Karang**—Earth's last basalt analog redoubt at the Indian Ocean margin, where ancient maritime Nusantara architecture meets deep-space orbital technology.

### 3.2 The Story-Within-A-Story Cryptographic Mechanism
Siti is our modern Scheherazade, but her stories are not decorative distractions.

> [!TIP]
> **The Scheherazade Rule:**  
> The oral tale Siti recounts—drawn from Nusantara seafaring heritage, 16th-century Aceh, or Indian Ocean spice routes—**contains the exact moral truth or linguistic riddle required to solve the outer sci-fi puzzle.**
> 
> *Example:* Shahrukh cannot decrypt an ancient alien planetary astrolabe through mathematical brute-force. Siti sits on the veranda, pouring tea, and recounts the legend of a 17th-century Pasai navigator who aligned his ship not by the stars, but by the fragrance of shore-blooming jasmine at midnight. Shahrukh realizes the cipher requires an organic olfactory frequency, not a numerical coordinate. The puzzle clicks open.

### 3.3 Fiction Guardrails
* **No Supernatural Horror**: Strictly no jinns, ghosts, black magic, or superstitious tropes. All phenomena are grounded in natural astrophysics, classical archaeology, mathematics, or human statecraft.
* **Episode Length**: 1,200 to 1,800 words per Sunday installment.
* **Ending Requirement**: Every episode must terminate on a decisive Dan Brown-style micro-cliffhanger.

---

## 4. Voice & Tone Guidelines for the 5 Editorial Desks

Every desk must translate its core domain into personal, human-centered broadsheet prose:

### 4.1 The Jauhari Column (Wan Jauhari)
* **Domain**: Sovereign Technology, Human Agency, Personal Autonomy.
* **Voice**: First-person essayistic, philosophical yet intensely practical, conversational.
* **Key Themes**: Escaping the algorithmic treadmill; building calm tools; preserving human dignity (*Karamah*) in the AI age.

### 4.2 The Shifa Desk (Dr. Hakim Zainur Rahman)
* **Domain**: Somatics, Family Nutrition, Prophetic Health, Neurobiology.
* **Voice**: Warm, compassionate clinician who understands parental exhaustion and modern metabolic disease.
* **Key Themes**: Gut-brain axis, prophetic third-full stomach, sleep hygiene, the physiology of dhikr. Avoid clinical jargon without immediate common-sense translations.

### 4.3 Corridors of Power (Hamza Khalid)
* **Domain**: Geoeconomics, Trade Corridors, Sovereignty, Statecraft.
* **Voice**: Sharp investigative reporter, authoritative, revealing behind-the-curtain mechanisms.
* **Key Themes**: De-dollarization, commodity corridors, food security, Straits of Malacca shipping realities. Always connect macro moves to the price of daily goods for working families.

### 4.4 Wealth, Waqf & Succession (Dr. Tariq Al-Amiri)
* **Domain**: Halal Wealth Preservation, Faraid, Waqf, Household Economics.
* **Voice**: Patient financial counselor and ethical jurist.
* **Key Themes**: Generational wealth without usury (*Riba*); making Hajj accessible again; estate disputes and family harmony; ethical investing for young professionals.

### 4.5 The Classical Polymath (Maryam Al-Andalusi)
* **Domain**: Living Philosophy, History of Science, Civilizational Wisdom.
* **Voice**: Eloquent cultural historian, bridging classical Islamic manuscripts with 21st-century dilemmas.
* **Key Themes**: Ghazali on mental anxiety; Ibn Khaldun on social decay; classical astronomy; learning how to think independently.

---

## 5. Broadsheet Formatting & Visual Standards

### 5.1 The 4-Tier Visual Architecture (Mandatory)
Every feature article must incorporate at least one structured visual component to ensure visual authority:
1. **Tier 1: KPI / Stat Strip (`FT-STAT-GRID`)**: 3–4 high-impact numerical callouts at the top of the article.
2. **Tier 2: Vector SVG Data Chart (`FT-VECTOR-CHART`)**: Clean, responsive broadsheet curves in FT Salmon (`#FFF1E5`) and Forest Green (`#0E4D36`).
3. **Tier 3: Process Flow Diagram (`FT-PROCESS-FLOW`)**: Sequential action steps for protocols or practical guides.
4. **Tier 4: Analytical Broadsheet Matrix (`FT-COMPARISON-MATRIX`)**: Clean side-by-side comparison tables.

### 5.2 Ghost Lexical Production Hygiene
* **Zero Markdown Syntax in Body**: Never leave raw asterisks (`**` or `*`) or backticks inside rendered body text. Parse formatting into native Ghost Lexical marks or clean HTML tags.
* **Zero Escaped HTML Tags**: Never allow literal `<br>` or `<em>` in plain text nodes.
* **Audio-First Pacing**: Write in rhythmic, cadenced sentences optimized for the `tts.falahos.my` Edge-TTS voice engine (Malaysian / British English natural cadences).

---

## 6. Pre-Flight Author Checklist

Before submitting any manuscript to the Ghost Admin queue or staging an edition of the Sunday Broadsheet, the author/agent must sign off on these 6 checks:

- [ ] **1. Kitchen Table Test**: Can a non-technical reader, tired parent, or university student read this without feeling alienated?
- [ ] **2. Real-World Hook**: Is the opening rooted in a genuine human dilemma, cost, or experience rather than an abstract theory?
- [ ] **3. Pacing & Momentum**: Does the prose move crisply, using active verbs and avoiding bureaucratic passive voice?
- [ ] **4. Moral & Spiritual Warmth (Buya Hamka)**: Is the tone grounded in empathy, adab, and civilizational dignity?
- [ ] **5. Fiction Cryptogram Alignment (If Serialized Fiction)**: Does Siti's story-within-a-story directly hold the key to Shahrukh's investigative puzzle?
- [ ] **6. Visual & Audio Readiness**: Are the FT-style stat cards and visual matrices included, and is the text ready for smooth TTS streaming?
- [ ] **7. AI Editorial Disclosure & Due Diligence Caveat**: Does the dispatch align with our site-wide Terms of Service? Readers must apply their own judgment and due diligence, acknowledging that AI-assisted research is probabilistic and not a substitute for certified medical, financial, or juridical counsel.

---
*Maintained by the Editorial Board & Research Directorate, Falah Research Institute.*  
*Distributed across the agent network via `agent-playbooks`.*