User talk:Pseudo-Richard/Islamic violence

Recent additions

A lot of the stuff that has been added recently (looks like it was by Pseudo-Richard) has nothing to do with Jihad and reads more like propaganda; much of it just violence that happened to be by Muslim. Many of the sources appear dubious, if not completely inappropriate for wikipedia. This article is long winded enough without people reciting every far-right pro-Israeli website they can find. I suggest someone who is non-bias looks over what has been added over the last month or so and make a attempt to remove all the irrelevance and POV stuff that makes up 50% of the article. Lordrichie (talk) 16:49, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

The stuff that I brought here came from Islam and violence originally. I'm trying to merge the two lists which admittedly are both laundry lists of every nasty thing ever done by Muslims. I'd love to have a conversation about where all this stuff belongs in Wikipedia. The obvious candidates are this article and Islam and violence. But there is also the question of whether there needs to be a single laundry list with every massacre, forced conversion, etc. in the history of Islam. Please read the section above titled "This article is too long - Proposal for new subsidiary articles". Let's talk. I've been waiting for someone to care enough to join me in this dialogue. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess there are several points that need to be addressed.

1. Which of these examples constitutes Jihad, what constitutes Islam and violence and what is neither.

2. Whether it is appropriate to create a separate article for examples or include them in this.

3. Whether it is necessary to list every crime committed by Muslims (I don't think this has been done on wikipedia for any other group of people).

4. Whether the things listed exist elsewhere on wikipedia (as many refer to Israeli Arab conflict, they most likely do).

5. Making sure what is added is factually accurate and NPOV.

6. Making sure the sources are appropriate.

One solution might be to move the information to a new article so it doesn't clutter up this one; it might just be temporary. Clearly much of it doesn't belong here as it has little or nothing to do with Jihad. There is also a difference between violence committed by a person who is Muslim and violence committed by a person because they are Muslim; for many of the examples, religion isn't the motive and is neither Jihad nor Islam and violence. Moving the information to this article has just made it more difficult to edit it. I think creating a new (temporary) article for it would be the best way to edit it and find a more permanent place to put anything worth keeping. That way this article doesn't get cluttered up. Lordrichie (talk) 22:00, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

So... to repeat: there were two lists. One in Jihad and one in Islam and violence. Neither was particularly well organized. The one in Jihad was organized by geographical location. The one in Islam and violence was organized chronologically. It was hard to tell if there was overlap or not so I have spent the last few weeks merging the two lists into a single geographically-organized list. I moved some stuff that was more general in nature out of the list altogether and put under titles like "Islamic fundamentalism". I think most of the material is either sourced or sourceable. One question is whether geographic organization is best or if there is a better way to organize the material. Another is where the list belongs: in a single article or in multiple articles.

Lordrichie's list of questions is a good start. Here are some of my initial responses to them:

1. This is a very valid question... I don't have a good handle on this yet. I'd like to hear what other editors think.
2. The two topics that seem suitable for creating a new article are the examples under Ottoman Empire and related to Israel/Palestine.
3. It's not that this is a list of "every crime committed by Muslims"; it is, however, a list of many of the more horrific crimes committed by Muslim rulers and governments. As such, it is still subject to allegations of being POV. We need to come up with an encyclopedic and scholarly framework for presenting this in a way that it is not just a laundry list of grievances with no coherent theme.
4. It's OK if the material lists elsewhere but it would be good to cross-link to such locations and cross-check to make sure the two lists are consistent and adequately sourced.
5. Of course.
6. Of course.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 22:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Good work so far, the Jihad works much better without all that stuff. By being more focused with the exampled, they could be added without cluttering the article.

I've gone through and put a dot next to those that are more specific to Jihad. These still need to be edited to make them NPOV and have their sources checked. Where a main article exist that can be linked to, they should just be a summary. This at least gives us an Idea of what belongs in the Jihad article. There might be others listed that have some relevance to holy war, but where the majority of text is not related to Jihad.

The other stuff is much more difficult because of the amount of POV language and unreliable sources. A lot of it will likely be in other articles which can be linked to with a short summery explaining it. Lordrichie (talk) 00:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I have copied over the text to User:Pseudo-Richard/Violent jihad and started removing the non-starred sections. I'm not sure that this list can be neatly divided into jihad and non-jihad incidents. If an incident is "non-jihad" then what is it exactly? I would prefer to create a list of jihad-related incidents and then look at other ways to consider the entire set (e.g. an article for the Ottoman Empire and another one for Israel/Palestine). I also think we could have an article on Forced conversions to Islam.--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 02:15, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Whilst giving examples of Jihad could be useful, a lot of this stuff might be less relevant. There is already an article on Forced conversion which talks about all religions. If there is an article dedicated to Forced conversions to Islam then why not any other religion and I see no benefit in listing every incident. There is already a detailed article on Armenian Genocide and countless articles to do with Israel/Palestine. There is no attempt to balance anything that has been written and much of the language is completely inappropriate. The quality of much of this stuff is terrible and the sources are equally as bad. Most of the sources are opinionated articles that provide accusation but no evidence. Most of the stuff from Islam and violence was written by Barrasita and Blitzland who already appear to have been warned about OR, POV and inappropriate sources. If their is anything worth keeping then by all means find an appropriate article to add it to, but I think a lot of it needs deleting. Lordrichie (talk) 05:31, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

So... let me see if I understand you correctly... are you saying you would just as soon dump all the examples and not have any such lists in any of the articles such as Jihad and Islam and violence? Or... are you saying that you want to restore the jihad-related list to Jihad and dump all the other examples without restoring them to Islam and violence? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 07:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The Jihad related list (with some editing) should go back to to Jihad. Some of the stuff from Islam and violence could go back there, however, not all of it seems to be relevant to either. There is a difficulty in deciding what is relevant because of the way it is all written. Looking through the history of Islam and violence its clear that those who added much of the list also exchanged many NPOV wordings with deliberately provocative POV wording, and considering the references that they used, its difficult to know if it was intended to be sincere. I don't doubt that some of the claims are genuine but they need to be properly researched, rewritten and re-referenced. Lordrichie (talk) 21:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)