Talk:Revisionist school of Islamic studies

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OR violations[edit]

@IbnTufail: You've now heard from multiple editors about your WP:NOR violations, and unfortunately you don't seem to be making progress toward understanding the difference between properly sourced text and editorial synthesis. This is really quite simple: for material liable to be challenged, every statement you add has to be a direct paraphrase of a cited source, or in special cases a direct quote. If much of the rest of this article hasn't yet been removed, it's not because it's policy-compliant, but rather because no editor took the time to review it carefully yet. I suggest you take this policy to heart if you don't want to see much of your other contributions disappear as well. Eperoton (talk) 22:11, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is relatively well-sourced in many respects. Much better sourced than many many other articles in the English Wikipedia. Many statements in this article reflect simply the given source. Most recently I added a lot of sources in the abuse-paragraph. There is no lack of good will on my side. I start to feel, that good will is missing on your side. Not well sourced is only the paragraph "The major representatives" because I had the feeling that the sources within the articles to each person would do it. Which can be improved. But your pressing exactly on my articles starts to become unfriendly, when you continue and continue just after I have shown another round of good will by adding many sources. I really do not get it. Look around in this Wikipedia: Shall I rely on direct citations only, word by word, only to please you, while you ignore major flaws everywhere else? --IbnTufail (talk) 22:34, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Ah, and I see that you put back the article to the ridiculous version, where the abuse of anti-Islamic activists is removed. O my dear, everthing is clear now. YOU remove the sourced parts and the direct citations, and put nonsense into the article. Good bye. Time to leave. Let the crazy Wikipedeans become happy within their own strange world. --IbnTufail (talk) 22:38, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Trust me, if I were "pressing" on your contributions, you would have seen many more deletions. A number of them are on my watchlist, and I've been letting most of them stand while trying to help you understand WP policies. I still think you have potential to make valuable, policy-compliant contributions, but I'm frankly disconcerted by your persistence in making the very same type of policy violations you have been warned about. Adding citations to your essays that don't properly source your statements doesn't help. There are many problems on WP and fixing them is slow, arduous work. If you think that turning out original essays which give a false impression of being properly sourced helps to improve WP, I assure you that all experience editors will tell you that you are mistaken. Eperoton (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For documentation purpose: The mutilated section: Original title: Abuse of Revisionism by anti-Islamic activists[edit]

Today several anti-Islamic activists got awareness of the research results of revisionist scholars and abuse them for their purposes. They are excited especially about the opinions of those researchers who doubt the historicity of Muhammad and date the Quran to a later time. These anti-Islamic activists use this to delegitimize and discredit Islam as a religion, and to call Muslims to leave Islam. The research of revisionist scholars whose research results leave the core essence of Islam untouched are intentionally ignored. James Heiser on Robert Spencer's book Did Muhammad Exist?: "Although many of the arguments presented have a measure of credibility, for this reviewer it seemed that Spencer himself was a bit too credulous when it came to gathering as much evidence as imaginable against Muhammad. Spencer’s work is not a "balanced" one — nor does it appear to have been intended to be. Very little counter evidence is presented seeking to refute the various arguments Spencer raises, and he may seem to some readers to be all too willing to give heed to "deconstructionist" writings."[1] Fred Donner judges on Ibn Warraq's The Quest for the Historical Muhammad: "More serious still is the compiler's heavy-handed favoritism for certain revisionist theories [...], resulting in a thoroughly one-sided selection ... ... ... This lopsided character makes The Quest for the Historical Muhammad a book that is likely to mislead many an unwary general reader. Most problematic of all, however, is the compiler's agenda, which is not scholarship, but anti-Islamic polemic."[2]

Furthermore, anti-Islamic activists ignore that Islam has intellectual ressources at its disposal to cope with the new situation: The discussion of the authenticity of traditional texts is not fundamentally alien to Islam, cf. the so-called Hadith studies. The rationalist movement of the Mutazillites expressed doubts on the traditions even at an early stage of Islamic history.[3] Anti-Islamic activists overlook, too, that the questioning of the traditional texts results in questioning "evidence" which made Muhammad look like a misanthrope.[4] They overlook, too, that a more philanthropic interpretation of the Quran is possible if the Quran is separated from its alleged context of wrong traditions.[5] Anti-Islamic activists also do not want to see the research results show that Islam is a product of Late Antiquity. This means a much closer relationship of Islam to Western civilization as expected until now.[6]

Further examples:

  • Norbert G. Pressburg published Good Bye Mohammed in German in 2009.
  • Jay Smith, a Christian fundamentalist missionary from London. He believes he can delegitimize Islam in its core essence by the new historical-critical research results. At the same time he believes that the biblical accounts would be fully conformed by historical-critical research.

End of the section. --IbnTufail (talk) 22:42, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Problematic passage[edit]

I find this passage problematic:

Another possible motivation for a reluctant acceptance of Revisionism could be the fear of reactions by faithful Muslims. One example is the fact that Muhammad most probably did not live in Mecca but somewhere in north-western Arabia which has been known for a long time - yet no researcher has touched on the topic, until the non-academic private researcher Dan Gibson took up the question.[27]

- Who makes the claim about "fear of reactions by faithful Muslims"? If it is Gibson's then it needs presented and sourced accordingly; if not then this probably shouldn't stay as is. - This: "Muhammad most probably did not live in Mecca... which has been known for a long time" is hardly a consensual view and shouldn't be presented as such ("most probably", "known for a long time"). - "... yet no researcher has touched on the topic until Dan Gibson" - This is contradicted by the very reference given, i.e. Crone's Hagarism.

The ref to Gibson clearly merits to stay, but please let someone familiar with his work rework this paragraph. 180.183.72.241 (talk) 09:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I am familiar with this self-published amateur's work. Not a reliable source. He and his work has no place in this article on the scholarly Revisionist school of Islamic studies, nor any related Wikipedia article but his very own.
Removed speculative passage quoted above on a "possible motivation" and unverifiable (because blatantly wrong, as you observe) claim as to scholarly consensus. Citing Gibson on Gibson would, of course, be inadmissible original research. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 19:12, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This Wikipedia Page Is Not Neutral[edit]

One of the key things about Wikipedia is that it should be neutral. However in this page there are many direct expressions of the editor's or the cited sources' points of view. These are mostly not under quotations but personal perspectives on history written as if they are accepted facts. Even the part about "criticism" is very subjective and after every negative opinion -that's mentioned- there is a sentence that begins with "but".

85.252.241.36 (talk) 17:13, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ James Heiser: A Review of "Did Muhammad Exist?" in The New American 13 July 2012
  2. ^ Fred Donner: Review of: The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, by Ibn Warraq, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 35(1), pp. 75–76.
  3. ^ Toby Lester: What Is the Koran? in: The Atlantic issue January 1999: "Islam's own history shows that the prevailing conception of the Koran is not the only one ever to have existed, and the recent history of biblical scholarship shows that not all critical-historical studies of a holy scripture are antagonistic. They can instead be carried out with the aim of spiritual and cultural regeneration. They can, as Mohammed Arkoun puts it, demystify the text while reaffirming "the relevance of its larger intuitions." "
  4. ^ James Heiser: A Review of "Did Muhammad Exist?" in The New American 13 July 2012: "The image of Muhammad as a butcher, pedophile, and brigand is the enduring impression left by Spencer’s previous work. Now, however, Spencer would have his readers believe that the very evidence that supported his previous writing about Muhammad was an elaborate fiction"
  5. ^ Patricia Crone: 'Jihad': idea and history openDemocracy 1 May 2007: The normal type of jihad is missionary warfare. That's how you'll find it described in the classical law-books, from about 800 to about 1800. What the Quran has to say on the subject is a different question: the rules it presupposes seem to be a good deal more pacifist than those developed by the jurists and exegetes. But it is the work of the latter which came to form the sharia.
  6. ^ Stefan Weidner: The Koran as a Text from Late Antiquity - A European approach Qantara.de 6 May 2011
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