Talk:Allegations of Saudi Arabian apartheid

message: The main discussion area for this series of articles is at: WP:APARTHEID
Please note that it was only speedy kept because an attempt was made to centralise discussion on the related group of articles. Thus this speedy retention does not imply overwhelming support for the existence of such articles. Casperonline 21:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Terraxos 03:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of [[:Template:{{ucfirst:Allegations of apartheid}}]]

message: Victor Falk, you didn't even create a section on the discussion page before trying to merge this.  Shame on ya.--Urthogie 16:15, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I'm sorry if I have misunderstood and there is some kind of freeze on editing until the central discussion has been resolved. My excuses. I just thought there was nothing here (apart from the picture) not covered in Human rights in Saudi Arabia#"Apartheid" (which furthermore gives a context for the allegations), except for an overredundancy of quotes and their sources, and that it would be better to expand that short section before having an article.--Victor falk 16:41, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, there is no freeze on editing, but it is basic wikietiquette not to go on a rampage trying to eliminate articles after they have survived AFDs.  You are trying to remove a template from all of the allegations pages that just survived AFD, and the ones you know cant get deleted you are trying to merge or redirect, often without even asking anyone's opinion.  Please be civil.--Urthogie 19:02, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  sad attempt at bypassing AFD 

message: Thank you--Victor falk 21:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I support the merger considering much of the article is quotes.Bless sins 01:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Please see the merger discussion [[Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Apartheid#What.27s_wrong_with_Saudi_Arabia.3F|here]]

message: The bias is in the title. The title puts one side in a debate on the real topic (the amount and nature of racism in the country in question) on the back foot before the first word of text, and the neutrality of the article cannot be recovered after that catastrophic start. This article sets out to group together a group of slurs under the pretence that together they make an encyclopedic topic. This is no more the case than for "Allegations that French people smell". Or imagine other series of article built around usage of slurs in the media: Allegations that Tony Blair is a liar, Allegations that Angela Merkel is a liar, Allegations that Bill Clinton is a liar, or Allegations that Paris Hilton is a talentless bimbo, Allegations that Lindsay Lohan is a talentless bimbo, Allegations that .... is a talentless bimbo. All of those could be sourced, and the fact that something is sourced does not necessarily make it neutral or a legitimate subject for an encyclopedia. The quoting of sources on any article does not confirm that it complies with :Wikipedia:Neutrality to the slightest degree; any biased essay can be fully sourced. No rephrasing or sourcing can make this article anything more than a politically motivated attack page. Wikipedia is not a place for debate or for arguing the toss. The presence of these articles disgraces Wikipedia. Dominictimms 13:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: This article is unfit to appear in an encyclopedia

message: The Andrea Dworkin source is dated to 1978, when Saudi society was still arguably primitve. However, Saudi Arabia has changed dramatically since. Thus, I don't think it is fair or even relevent to quote Saudi practices 30 years ago to their practices today.Bless sins 14:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Israel article includes Gaza allegations, and no one has ever successfully challenged that.--Urthogie 15:40, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be a flawed argument, even if it weren't factually unsound. PalestineRemembered 09:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Andrea Dworkin

message: Here is the material related to gender apartheid in the article. Editors are encouraged to merge this information into the Sex segregation article. 
Saudi Arabia's practices with respect to women have been referred to as "gender apartheid". Handrahan, L.M. Gender Apartheid and Cultural Absolution: Saudi Arabia and the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Internet, Human Rights Tribune, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2001. According to Rita Henley Jensen" while Saudi Arabian women "have the right to own property, transact business, go to school and be supported by their husbands, while maintaining their separate bank accounts", "Women on Saudi soil must have a husband or male relative as an escort. We are not allowed to drive. When sight-seeing we must wear a full-length black gown known as an abaya. During Saudi Arabia's first elections, held the week before my arrival, women were not permitted to vote or run for office." She states that hotels have no female employees, and that segregated eating areas in hotels and beaches for women have poorer facilities. She also criticizes Saudi law for setting female inheritance at half of what men inherit (see Female inheritance in Islam).Jensen, Rita Henley.  Taking the Gender Apartheid Tour in Saudi Arabia, Women's eNews, 03/07/2005.
Andrea Dworkin refers to these practices simply as "apartheid":
Seductive mirages of progress notwithstanding, nowhere in the world is apartheid practiced with more cruelty and finality than in Saudi Arabia. Of course, it is women who are locked in and kept out, exiled to invisibility and abject powerlessness within their own country. It is women who are degraded systematically from birth to early death, utterly and totally and without exception deprived of freedom. It is women who are sold into marriage or concubinage, often before puberty; killed if their hymens are not intact on the wedding night; kept confined, ignorant, pregnant, poor, without choice or recourse. It is women who are raped and beaten with full sanction of the law. It is women who cannot own property or work for a living or determine in any way the circumstances of their own lives. It is women who are subject to a despotism that knows no restraint. Women locked out and locked in.Dworkin, Andrea. A Feminist Looks at Saudi Arabia, 1978. In "Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1989", Lawrence Hill Books, Reprint edition (May 28, 1993). 
Colbert I. King quotes an American official who accuses Western companies of complicity in Saudi Arabia's sexual apartheid:
One of the (still) untold stories, however, is the cooperation of U.S. and other Western companies in enforcing sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms, for instance, maintain strictly segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The men's sections are typically lavish, comfortable and up to Western standards, whereas the women's or families' sections are often run-down, neglected and, in the case of Starbucks, have no seats. Worse, these firms will bar entrance to Western women who show up without their husbands. My wife and other [U.S. government affiliated] women were regularly forbidden entrance to the local McDonald's unless there was a man with them."
King, Colbert I. Saudi Arabia's Apartheid, The Washington Post,  December 22, 2001. 
Azar Majedi, of the Centre for Women and Socialism, attributes sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia to political Islam:
Women are the first victims of political Islam and Islamic terrorist gangs. Sexual apartheid, stoning, compulsory Islamic veil and covering and stripping women of all rights are the fruits of this reactionary and fascistic movement.Majedi, Azar. Sexual Apartheid is a Product of Political Islam, Medusa - the Journal of the Centre for Women and Socialism.
According to The Guardian, "[i]n the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sexual apartheid rules", and this sexual apartheid is enforced by mutawa, religious police, though not as strongly in some areas:
The kingdom's sexual apartheid is enforced, in a crude fashion, by the religious police, the mutawa. Thuggish, bigoted and with little real training in Islamic law, they are much feared in some areas but also increasingly ridiculed. In Jeddah - a more laid-back city than Riyadh - they are rarely seen nowadays.Whitaker, Brian. Veil power, "Special Report: Saudi Arabia", The Guardian, February 21, 2006.
Tiamat 11:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's all specifically about allegations of apartheid in Saudi Arabia. Please stop deleting relevant and properly sourced material, regardless of your POV on the matter. Jayjg (talk) 13:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You need to take up your complaints with Andrea Dworkin, Colbert I. King and The Guardian. Perhaps you could write them letters explaining their "sloppiness" and asking them to retract their words. Though it's probably too late in Dworkin's case. Jayjg (talk) 05:59, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just noticed that Israel is increasingly practising the same thing - should I edit this into the relevant article? Opponents of the separation buses face an uphill struggle. ... "They've already cancelled higher education in the ultra-orthodox world for women. They have packed the religious courts with ultra-orthodox judges. In some places there are separate sides of the street women have to walk on." (PS - I'm not serious, I do my best not to attack people's religion and religious practise - and accusations of "sexual apartheid" are ridiculous. But I'd be interested to know if you think Israel can/should be accused of it). PalestineRemembered 16:50, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Gender apartheid material should be merged into Sex Segregation

message: A newly created article related to this one, Allegations of Chinese apartheid, has been nominated for deletion. Comments are invited on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Chinese apartheid. -- ChrisO 07:26, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We should have a pool on when we reach 100 Allegations of x country apartheid articles! El_C 02:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Responding to myself: the irony (?) is that we can have an allegations of apartheid applied to many other tens of countries, especially ones with some sort of fairly recent public-private dichotomy and other forms of stratification. El_C 02:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allegations of Chinese apartheid 

message: Keep per Humus, nice picture. Arrow740 01:39, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your Humus entirely missed the point here. Where in this nice picture stands that some Muslim woman/man is prohibited from using this road if she/he was of diffrent race or ethnic origin or color or nationality, as permitted by the Saudi laws? Because that is what we call apartheid. Just give me one shred of evidence that it happened at least once. I bet you'll never find it; your Humus only made fool from himself and from you too. greg park avenue 02:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In case you missed it, that someone be me, the administrator who closed the AfD. El_C 03:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, it is conventional to continue those discussions cut short by a closure in that AfD's respective talk page. For future reference. El_C 03:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case you forgot to remove that AfD template from the main page. This way everybody gets confused. Next time, try to do better job, or don't rush with those speedy closings, if you don't mind a little advise. greg park avenue 03:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

text: There is no trace of that AfD on this discussion page, so how can I find this AfD's respective talk page you suggested for future reference? greg park avenue 03:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It gets removed automatically, by a bot. The discussion page is here. Closing xfDs, speedily and otherwise, is at my administrative discretion, which you may contest at deletion review, but not this way. El_C 03:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for your inconvinience, El C, but I'm using Netscape, so when there is an edit conflict I just come back after a while and try again. It always worked, but not this time. Shalom greg park avenue 03:47, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not at all, it wasn't a problem. בברכה, El_C 04:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit conflict on AfD page, page closed short by someone for no apparent reason in the middle of the discussion, continue discussion here 

message: :The result was merge. -- Jreferee (Talk) 01:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not a all for nothing. It is the sensible, non-partisan and non-political way to do this as per the long discussions in the different AfDs and comments by ArbCom. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ideogram, there's no reason to put down another editor who did a first pass at something. Why not just make the other article better instead of criticizing Jossi?  Bigglove 13:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jossi has made over a hundred edits since then including posting all these messages about his merge, which surely could have waited until the merge was complete.  And if you would take the time to examine the article in question, you would see that I already have fixed the article.  Thanks for making more work for me.  --Ideogram 13:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Don't get me wrong, the material itself is very useful,  --Ideogram 14:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I'll second Bigglove's remarks. I'm not involved in this, but in the last day or two, snide or abusive remarks made by Ideogram against Jossi have been appearing in my watchlist, and I think it's time to stop. ElinorD (talk) 14:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever.  Just don't let Jossi do the merge.  --Ideogram 14:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What's wrong with Jossi? I supported you on China's article, remember? If you think Jossi did poor job on merging China's article contents, why haven't you done it by yourself? greg park avenue 14:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, okay, you made your point.  We're working on it.  --Ideogram 19:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The merge is not going well.  Jossi is forcing us to justify every single edit to him which is an enormous bottleneck.  This system will never work for all the articles in the series.  --Ideogram 02:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Let me make this absolutely clear.  I fixed the article with about an hour's worth of edits.  Jossi came back and immediately reverted all my edits and forced me to start all over, walking him through my edits step by step.  It has been over nine hours since this process began; most of my changes were accepted by Jossi, but the process is still not finished and we cannot make progress when he is not here because he reverts everything when he comes back.  This is unacceptable.  --Ideogram 02:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Jossi seems to think the material from the deleted article was pretty good and so doesn't require much editing.  In fact it was crap.  You can see my detailed objections to him on Talk:Human rights in the People's Republic of China#Discussion.  He has not yet addressed the last twelve objections, and he will not let me edit without him.  --Ideogram 02:46, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

text: You can't rewrite this article. If you want to merge some contents of this article into another one, edit the other one, or if there is no suitable for merging existing article, you can create one. Then you ask an administrator to merge it. See how Anna Halman article (which even survived recently an AfD) was merged into the School violence article. greg park avenue 16:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think I understand what you are saying to me.  --Ideogram 18:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It means you cannot fix this article without consulting the others. It's too hot. But you can create similar one you think is more apropriate, give it a different name, or create a section in an existing article or in several ones, and after that ask an administrator to execute the merge. Merge means, this article would be deleted, even without AfD. But your new article or the new section/s must be better than this one is, and it must satisfy all Wikipedia guidelines of course. Not an easy task. But if you're an expert on this subject, be bold and try it as Jimbo says. It's legal. You can even create a mirror article using the same title as the Allegations of Saudi Arabian apartheid/Temporary. greg park avenue 19:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: First you tell me not to criticize Jossi's merge instead of fixing it myself.  Then you tell me I cannot work on the article.  My version of the article is clearly visible in the history.  I'm not going to make myself suffer any more to help you.  --Ideogram 20:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, Ideogram, I did that for you. You can find your last version of merge proposal at the Human rights in the People's Republic of China/Temporary article. Now you can ask someone to execute this version if applicable, but it's a bit too late, because the Allegations of Chinese apartheid has already been deleted, so there won't be any discussion, and that is the sole purpose of the merge - to delete the unwanted stuff and move somewhere else what's worthy to conserve. I was sure you were talking about merge of this article - "Allegations of Saudi Arabia apartheid", not the old Chinese one everybody has already forgotten of. But you can try anyway. You can also post a link to the temporary version on the discussion page of the article in question and give your reasons for changing it. greg park avenue 22:55, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your help.  I am using Jossi's merge of the Chinese article as an example of how it should not be done, so it is relevant to the discussion of his proposal.  I repeat:  any merge of his will need to be reviewed.  I have indeed listed my reasons on the talk page.  I leave the rest up to all of you.  --Ideogram 01:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

text: WP:ALLORNOTHING  is neither policy not a guideline. In cases of systemic bias, or systemic problems with a group of articles, there is nothing wrong with applying same good arguments across a group of similar articles. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends on how similar the articles are and, in particular, how similar their sources are. In the case of this series there is a wide disparity of quality and notability so it's impossible to treat all of the articles in the same way. Jossi, if your proposal to merge this article with Human rights in Saudi Arabia is sound then it is sound regardless of what happens to any other article. The proposal should, and will, rise or fall based on its own merits - not based on any broader agenda.  Lothar of the Hill People 02:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not about an "agenda",it is about a possible bias that compromises NPOV systemically. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal 

message: I'm confused about the point of procedure here.  Shouldn't there have been another formal AFD rather than an informal poll and merge?  Bigglove 02:18, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  AFD is when deletion of the content is proposed, a merge is not a deletion, just a relocation of content, which remains subject to normal editorial process.  GRBerry 13:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFD vs. Merge?