User:Aminz/RfC

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The following users involved in "Anti-Semitism" related article:

Note: Some guess that User:Beit Or is the same as User:Pecher. If true more evidences can be presented.

Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Contents

[edit] Statement of the dispute

Some editors working sharing a POV on Anti-Semitism article are alleged to timewasting attempts to trash sound academic research as well as violation of WP:RS, WP:NPOV.

[edit] Description

Particular wiki-policies that are violated in timewasting attempts to trash sound academic research.

1. Violations of WP:RS and WP:NPOV

#1 Removal of the quotes from Encyclopedia of Islam, the standard encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies. Examples: [1], [2], [3]

The article in Encyclopedia of Islam is written by Claude Cahen a distinguished Islamic historian (According to Prof. Mark Cohen), "an eminent authority" (in words of S.D. Goitein another renowned scholar whom these editors themselves approve and use). The above quote was taken from the Dhimmi article by Cahen. S.D. Goitein describes this article as "For Islam, see the concise, up-to-date, and authorative article "Dhimma" by Claude Cahen in EI, which registers also the relevant material." Another example of removal of sourced material is User:Beit Or's edits on Claude Cahen's article: [4]

Other evidences presented in support of Cahen's quote: Encyclopedias writing about anti-semitism and Medieval times don't mention Islam at all: examples: Encyclopedia of The Medieval World History on Anti-Semitism, Encyclopedia of The Middle Ages on Anti-Judiasm, Dictionary of The Middle Ages on Anti-Semitism

When User:BhaiSaab asked User:Humus Spaiens to read the Encyclopedia of Islam article, he dismissed the reliability of the source based on his own views [5]. To Humus sapiens, Encyclopedia of Islam is a POV teritary source which must be removed [6]

#2 Usage of unreliable sources over reliable ones. These users consider Paul Johnson (journalist), a conservative journalist who has only a lower-second class degree in Jesuit method (which is not even Islamic studies or Jewish studies), to be more reliable than Bernard Lewis & Claude Cahen for the following reasons:

Johnson's publications are have likely outsold those of Lewis by a wide margin (diffs [7] and [8])
Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill academic publisher, the source in which Claude Cahen has published his article is a POV teritary source. [9]
Johnson has a lot of publications.

In fact, the book written by Johnson, the conservative journalist, is not peer reviewed either. It is published by "New York: HarperCollins Publishers", not a univ press or other ones which particularly publish scholarly books. I have introduced many sources to them including Bernard Lewis, Claude Cahen, Norman Stillman, etc etc but they insist in using the conservative journalist despite existence of several other sources.

Humus Sapeins believes Johnson is a notable historian [10] and I was accused of attempting to remove material that does not correspond to your POV.[11].


#3 Removal of views of scholars such as Bernard Lewis, Norman Stillman and S. D. Goitein. Before that, we need to to see the views within academia of the subject. My research shows that there are two academic POVs regarding traditional Islam:

  • 1. There was no antisemitism. Examples of scholars who state that: Claude Cahen, Bernard Lewis: Quotes:

- Bernard Lewis: "Prejudices existed in the Islamic world, as did occasional hostility, but not what could be called anti-Semitism"

- Claude Cahen: "There is nothing in mediaeval Islam which could specifically be called anti-semitism." (This very sentence is also quote by Mark Cohen)

- Nissim Rejwan: "Anti-Semitism, then, is an exclusively Christian phenomenon and, as such, a predominantly Western one. It is therefore both historically wrong and morally inexcusable to try to apply the term to non-Christian and non-Western societies."[12]

  • 2. Antisemitism was not absent as it is assumed. There was little antisemitism:

- S.D. Goeith: "Still “anti-Semitism,” that is, hostility directed against the Jewish community, was not entirely absent from medieval islam, as has been assumed." The footnote for "as has been assumed" says: "Even by such an eminent authority as Claude Cahen (in the EI article quoted above)"

- The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion writes: "In the Muslim world, antisemitism developments were far less overt, except in periods of religous extremism. There was little specific antisemitism, and Jews were treated (or ill-treated) like other infidels."

  • 3. In modern times, Norman Stillman writes: "Increased European commercial, missionary and imperialist activities within the Muslim world during the 19th and 20th centuries introduced anti-Semitic ideas and literature into the region. At first these prejudices only found a reception among Arabic-speaking Christian protégés of the Europeans in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt and were too new and too palpably foreign for any widespread acceptance among Muslims. However, with the ever-increasing conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine during the period of the British Mandate, the language and imagery of European anti-Semitism began to appear in political polemics both in the nationalist press and in books."

I was progressively working on this section. The last final version which I ended up with but was reverted is as follows: [13]

#4 Removal of Tags.

Given the above disputes, these users remove the dispute tags from the articles:

[14], [15], [16], [17]

#5 Dismissing reliable sources by calling them polemic, or being anti-Zionist:

  • Source: Nissim Rejwan, Israel's Place in the Middle East: A Pluralist Perspective, University Press of Florida. User Jayjg: "Rejwan is a polemist"[18]. Please note that the book is published by a university press and Nissim Rejwan is a research fellow at the Harry Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

2. Double Standards

User:Humus spiens, used the scholar S. D. Goitein (a famous scholar of Jewish studies) when it was quoted by the journalist but removed it when I added it. In fact, even the journalist refers to Goitein as a "great scholar". I was expecting and requested User:Humus spiens to add back the scholarly quotes but instead he added another quote from the journalist.

User:Jayjg while accepts the *un-peer-reviewed* work of a journalist, is over-skeptical of a peer-reviewed article from the Journal of Palestine Studies which could be found in JSTOR .[19].

[edit] Evidence of disputed behavior

(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

Examples of removal of quotes from Encyclopedia of Islam and replacing them with one of a journalist: [20], [21], [22]
Preference of a journalist over scholars like Bernard Lewis (diffs [23] and [24])
Given all that history of disputes, recently the users were refusing to have a disputed tag on the Islam & anti-semitism related articles. Beit Or viewed my posting of the tag as warring against consensus.[25], [26], [27], [28]
Dismissing sources: e.g. Nissim Rejwan, Israel's Place in the Middle East: A Pluralist Perspective, University Press of Florida. User Jayjg: "Rejwan is a polemist"[29].

[edit] Applicable policies and guidelines

WP:RS
WP:NPOV

[edit] Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

[30] + a lot of discussions on the talk page of Antisemitism
[31]
[32]

[edit] Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

Aminz 22:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other users who endorse this summary

[edit] Response

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[edit] Outside view

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[edit] Discussion

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