From: alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu (M. Saggaf)
Subject: Re: RFD, s.r.i.ahmadiyya (Back to the Issues II)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 04:51:55 GMT


In a post to news.groups on Tue, 27 Oct 1992, I wrote:

"References: <nahmed-271092102011@amac179.acns.nwu.edu>,
 			<nahmed-271092143129@amac179.acns.nwu.edu>,
	 		<nahmed-271092155409@amac179.acns.nwu.edu>

"First, I must remind everybody not to waste the bandwidth posting
articles with several levels of of quotes, or posting the same article
several times. Sending three identical articles to the net in a few
hours, each of which is 250+ lines long, is a waste of time and money,
and few people would bother to read beyond the first one anyway. (The
message IDs of those articles are listed as references in the header,
take a look at them)."

In a later post on Sat, 31 Oct 1992, nahmed@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (NAWAZ
AHMED) wrote:

NA> References: <ALSAGGAF.92Oct30142933@carbonara.mit.edu>
	<nahmed-301092201722@amac179.acns.nwu.edu>

NA> In article <ALSAGGAF.92Oct30142933@carbonara.mit.edu>,
NA> alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu (M. Saggaf) wrote:

[another article of mine quoted by Mr. Nawaz, deleted for brevity]

NA> MR.SAGGAF WHERE IS PRINCIPLE STAND OF SAVING BAND WITH. THIS ARTICLE OF
NA> YOURS APPERS TWICE. MINE WERE ALL DIFFEREN FROM EACH OTHER WITH
NA> ADDITIONS.DONT YOU KNOW HOW TO ACT ON WHAT YOU PREACH.


NA> NAWAZ AHMED
NA> NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY


Well, I had intended not to respond to the above, but then I thought
that a reply would serve as an illustration of the difference between
baseless allegations and founded ones, a distinction some of the
participants in this discussions apparently lack the knowledge of.
Hence, I must ask you to excuse the digression.

First, my original article was intended to be a gentle reminder to
everybody participating in the discussion not to waste the bandwidth
of the net in unnecessary quotes and mega-articles that are identical
or have analogous contents, since I had noticed a multitude of such
articles apparently from people under the mistaken impression that a
larger volume of articles would be perceived as the voice of the
majority and would sway public opinion in their favor -- regardless of
the contents of such articles. I for one try to avoid posting to the
net unless I have something new to add, I realize that listening to
someone "beating a dead horse" gets to be boring after a while.

Second, since I intended Mr. Nawaz' articles to demonstrate my point,
I referred to them in my article (though politely and without even
mentioning his name). But since I never allege anything without proof,
I cited the message IDs of his posts in the references (since they
uniquely identify the posts) and urged people to take a look at them
at the end of the paragraph in which I mentioned them (take a look at
that paragraph above).

Now that's what I call a 'founded' allegation (although it wasn't
intended to be an allegation really, just an illustrious example). Mr.
Nawaz, on the other hand, made the charge that I was not practicing
what I preach and that I posted an article (the one he quoted) twice.
He never produced any evidence that I did so, such as a message ID or
the like (he couldn't, since I posted that article only once). Now
that's what I call an 'unfounded' charge, and while it could be either
with a malicious intent or just an honest mistake (e.g. a problem with
his newsfeed), it is nonetheless an _unfounded_ allegation. So here it
is again, in a nutshell: an allegation is unfounded unless accompanied
with a proof.

Sorry for the digression, but the relevance of this is the obvious
analogy between the above and the 'unfounded' allegations of Mr. Rana
against the moderators of soc.religion.islam. I sure hope spreading
unwarranted charges is not a habitual practice of the proponents of
*.ahmadiyya.

Take care,

--
/M. Saggaf
 alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu


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