QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
The key point.......A neutral treatment of Muhammad and Islam is not normal for Islamic countries. Neutrality towards Islam, Muhammad, Allah, the Qur'an, etc., is, by definition, apostasy.
Yeah, and criticism of your government during war is treason.
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
I'm not aware of any secular biographies of Muhammad in the Islamic world. What would they be for, when the answers are known already? ....The cause of conflict here isn't Wikipedia, but the internet.
Not really. You are extrapolating this to a greater picture, which is inappropriate.
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
If all media is digitized, instead of being trapped in books, and online - and shouldn't that be the goal? - the unintended consequence is that it's asked to run a new gauntlet of censorship regimes (and not just Islamic, but Chinese, etc.), particularly because it's in English.
There is plenty that is censored in "English". For cultural or whatever reasons, which we consider reasonable. Religion simply isn't a big deal for Anglophonic culture of late, so it isn't as controversial.
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
To refuse is to upset foreign people and governments; to accept is to uniquely cede the character of our own media.
Foreign? What's Foreign?
When the WMF Chairman is French. When WMF servers are in the US, France, Germany, and other countries, and the membership is pan-global, then the word foreign no longer applies.
You are speaking as if Wikipedia/WMF were an American institution, and it is not. Not even Wiki-en is American.
Wikipedia is a "non-state actor."
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
to accept is to uniquely cede the character of our own media.
And this turns it into a "caving into those who would attack the way of 'our culture', when it isn't 'our culture' at all (American).
And again, mind you, the U.S. Supreme Court took enough concern for the very same concern (image of mohammed) to alter verbiage to halt offense to others. All this talk about "giving in to others" wasn't an issue for the Supreme Court. Respect was an issue. Not in this discussion, sadly.
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
There's a reason why the Islamic world isn't producing encyclopedias - or any significant contemporary academic scholarship in the humanities,
Cheap shot. And inaccurate.
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
much less secular treatments of Muhammad and Islamic history - and it behooves us to ask if we want to move - even a little bit - in that direction.
This is the bottom line to what you are doing/supporting. Using Wikipedia to stick a thorn in something to attempt to provoke change. It is a bad strategy, and will backfire. No one is going to "see the light" and veer away from Mohammed or Islam when you've offended their sensibilities.
QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Sat 2nd February 2008, 10:22pm)
Because the way things are going (and referring to an earlier discussion in this thread,) there won't be any libraries where things can hide from the Western public, and there won't be any English-language media which can hide from the English-speaking international public. It's all going online.
Panic.
This post has been edited by Disillusioned Lackey: