Talk:Walid Shoebat

message: This is borderline. If I believed in vfd, I would nominate it. It's little more than an ad for this guy's website. --user:Ed Poor (deep or sour) 15:54, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
: Ok Ed , I have therefore expanded this article quite a bit.--CltFn 02:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Expanded with information like "Walid is part of a growing movement of former Muslims who are taking a stand against Islam and it's terrorist tactics." and words like "PLO terrorist".  How very NPOV. Please read WP:NPOV. --a.n.o.n.y.m   t 02:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The very first line "the assumed name of the owner of the website Shoebat.com" is unfortunate wording. This sounds like "an imaginary character". Then, the article goes from bad to worse. 
We say "This biographical entry is based primarily on the information provided on his website", even though a half-a-dozen of ext. links is provided. I think we should use the word pseudonym and get rid of POV. This guy is real, he travels and lectures. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 00:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes he is very real indeed, as in other free thinker articles covered on Wikipedia , there are those who wish that he was not real and who seem dedicated to blanking them out.--CltFn 12:03, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What exactly makes Walid Shoebat a "free thinker" and why do you think that others wish that he wasn't real? I'm a Muslim and I think this guy is hilarious. Shabeki (talk) 08:01, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do we need to see his ID card? 

message: The major problem it starts in a bad faith and goes on to worse. 
* is pro-zionist author. -- nothing wrong with being a pro-Zionist author, but this characterization is a severe POV compared to is a Palestinian author and former Muslim and a former PLO terrorist who captured international attention by converting to Christianity and becoming a ardent critic of Islam and a supporter of Israel
* His biographical entry is based primarily on the information provided on his website. -- this is just silly to say in the article with a dozen or so of independent external links. 
* His original name is not publicly known, and his story is uncorroborated and not otherwise verifiable. -- another silly phrase. See the section above about his ID card. 
* What's the problem with the image? 
* While praised by some for his pro-Israel stand, some charge that he is motivated by profit. -- Proof please. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 04:14, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good obseravtions. Also observe that anonymous editor is an infidel-hating muslim. He doesn't need facts or anything of the sort to "prove" anything.--Nosharia 13:31, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The problems with anon's version 

message: Just to explain my changes.
* I removed the pictures because when I saw the argument I figured the best way to sort it out was to make CltFn source his images and give copyright tags.  He sourced one but couldn't provide the copyright tags so I deleted them as I told him I would.  If there is going to be conflict over images then they should be well sourced.  If he can add the images with sources and legitimate copyright tags then they can stay.  He said he e-mailed Shoebat so when the results of that get back he might have permission for that one image.  For the Fox screenshot he needs to show where he got it and why it's fair use.
* "growing" -- Is the movement growing?  Is it really a movement?  I think we'd need some good sourcing on that besides Walid's website to actually discuss if this is a valid, real, and growing movement.  There was no legitimate sociological study or anything of the kind cited.
* Husseini's alliance with the Nazis is of no consequence to this article.  If anything it's trying to defame a man's name... when it really was not the largest part of his life nor the most relevant.
* NPOV, because of the arguments between the editors I think it's safe to say there is a neutrality dispute.  My biggest concern in this regard is the copious number of quotes.  It makes this more dramatic than anything else in my book.  What is the use of the anecdote about Arab-state's propaganda versus the reality of the Israeli Army's success? I'm not sure... but, things like that should be discussed.
About the edit changes between Anonymous Editor and Cltfn... well, I don't know exactly.  I haven't taken the time to see what comes from Shoebat's site and what comes from independent sources.  To AE, some of this must be credible because BBC reports on it... so we can't ignore it saying it comes from Shoebat's site. (Humus is right about that) But, I don't know if all of it comes from credible sources... and you must discern between what does and what doesn't. gren グレン 04:39, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gren's changes 

message: There must be a more NPOV way to express this; as it stands it seems rather racist and suggests that the dislike in Palestine for
Jews is just an outburts of unprovoked and irrational anger and not a predictable response to living under occupation for six decades.  I mean, objectively, we should dislike prejudice in whatever form and seek to cleanse ourselves of it but we must exercise charity in our understanding of the roots of prejudice.  Cant about 'the culture of hate and barbarism' only serves to obscure the underlying socio-political problems that Palestinians face. --لقمانLuqman 01:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Funny, Jewish settlers attacking Arabs on those same grounds is just as racist. Racism works both ways.Shabeki (talk) 22:45, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: "Culture of Hate and Barbarism?"

message: Someone keeps inserting the phrase "anti-Israel activist, former spokesperson for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and rapper (under the name Iron Sheik)" in the section about Will Youmens's CounterPunch article about Shoebat. This looks as if it's intended as an ad hominem attack on Youmens, discrediting him by referring to his political beliefs instead of addressing the substance of his claims about Shoebat. However, if other users think that this phrase is justified and relevant, I won't object to it being restored.--GagHalfrunt 18:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Will Youmens 

message: "An article on Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian website, describes him as a member of a "fanatic" sect (apparently referring to Evangelical Christianity) who makes "blatantly racist declarations against Islam"
I wasn't aware Islam was a race.72.152.206.218 07:49, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's be honest here. Creating a neutral page for so controversial a figure is a very difficult task. Shabeki (talk) 08:03, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism notes 

message: Interesting video that shows some contradictions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RehZY6tHcA
:Not to mention the New York Times article 'Speakers at Academy Said to Make False claims'
The Air Force Academy was criticized by Muslim and religious freedom organizations for playing host on Wednesday to three speakers who critics say are evangelical Christians falsely claiming to be former Muslim terrorists. [...] Academic professors and others who have heard the three men speak in the United States and Canada said some of their stories border on the fantastic[.] [...] They also question how three middle-aged men who claim they were recruited as teenagers or younger could have been steeped in the violent religious ideology that only became prevalent in the late 1980s. 
<eleland/talkedits> 09:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, the Jerusalem Post article that makes clear the inaccuracies of his claims: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1206632362598&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Menaus (talk) 00:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Lots of people have, actually. Most Americans (including me) believe David Duke is insane. Stonemason89 (talk) 21:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just for interest sake: Have you also questioned the sanity or credentials of socalled Holocaust Survivors? I don't see that being doen on wikipedia. --41.151.178.30 (talk) 23:59, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Walid Shoebat a fraud? 

message: Enough, Walid Shoebat: Why is Sean Hannity's Fake Terrorist Harassing Me?]--Kitrus (talk) 06:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Both of them are lacking in credibility. There are several instances where Shoebat is lacking in credibility. Since neither the bank in Israel nor any actual terrorists can verify Shoebat's "terrorist" activities, I do not find Shoebat to be credible on just about anything he says. Shabeki (talk) 03:00, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Debbie Schlussel]] questions Shoebat's credentials 

message: :per the following diff - 
According to the following source, CNN is describing him as a former PLO terrorist rather than a self-claim. Would be good if this issue is fixed and the citation is added.Cheers, JaakobouChalk Talk 03:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just because CNN says he is one doesn't mean he is one. Remember Dewey Defeats Truman? Stonemason89 (talk) 22:00, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self/described as terrorist 

message: The criticism section questions as to how he retains his citizenship if he were confessing to acts of terrorism. To the best of my knowledge, despite WHERE he was born he is still a natural born citizen as a result of WHO he was born to. Thus his citizenship can not be revoked. I could be wrong of course.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.150.45.231 (talk) 09:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism comment regarding citizenship 

message: I watched some videos from a California prophecy conference and noticed his accent seems to change quite a lot. Sometimes he sounds stereotypical Arab, sometimes even Scottish, sometimes he sounds American. I suppose it could be because he learned English from a variety of sources.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.150.45.231 (talk) 10:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Has anyone criticized his accent? 

message: "CNN attempted to discredit his story, but Shoebat has responded in detail to CNN's claims, demonstrating the veracity of his story and explaining the issues CNN raised." And the source of this supposed successful refutation of CNN's claims about Shoebat's fraud comes from........Shoebat's website.
Wikipedia's standards must have been dramatically lowered to allow this nonsense on here. This article definitely needs to be cleaned up and made more factual. Regardless of whether or not this guy is telling the truth, a neutral source of information should used to defend him (and not one regurgitated by Pamela Geller/Daniel Pipes/Robert Spencer, who have no neutral point of view). As it is, I would take the word of a respectable news organization over a guy with an agenda. The fact that even Debbie Schlussel has doubts about his credibility shows that you can't use his own website to successfully defend his claims.Shabeki (talk) 22:59, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: None of that is relevant.  Please see WP:RS and WP:OR. The article must be based on reliable sources and not research conducted by users. Poyani (talk) 21:38, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: And honestly, a truly "rational free thinker" would take the time to conform to wikipedia's standards instead of believing any unverified, suspicious claims made by Shoebat. Shabeki (talk) 08:07, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

text: No one here is quoting Debbie Schlussel, so I don't understand your point. I simply referenced her because the two of them both seem to have an intense dislike of Islam, and yet one turned on the other. Shabeki (talk) 03:03, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  This might be one of the worst written articles on Wikipedia 

message: This article is listed as part of the series for "Criticism of Religion".  As far as the contents reflect, the author in question is not a critic of religion.  They are a critic of Islam, which is just one particular religion.  The classification under "Criticism of Religion is certainly inaccurate. Poyani (talk) 21:35, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and have removed the template. It seems there was originally a template specifically for criticism of Islam, but it was merged into a general criticism of religion template. As such, it is no longer appropriate on this article. Robofish (talk) 16:10, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Criticism of Religion" classification 

message: Just a reminder to editors that the content of the articles should be based on reliable sources. As a general rule, these are news organizations (excluding Op-Eds and editorials) and scholarly publications.  Self-published sources are not reliable sources (which means Shoebat's personal website should not be listed as a source for anything). If a reliable source cannot be found for a particular claim, then it should not be included.  I personally don't think there should even be an article on this subject, since not much is available on him.  Googling his name brings up this wikipedia article, in addition to hundreds of pages from his own site or his YouTube page.  I did find a few reliable sources by skimming through the results.  They are as follow:
BBC
New York Times
Jerusalem Post
CNN
In the coming days, unless there are any objections, I mean clean up the article so it reflect only these sources or any other reliable sources already in use.  If you disagree, please either discuss here or revert the changes and then discuss here.   Poyani (talk) 22:16, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable Sources 

message: Over half of his article is a "Criticism" section.  That's just ridiculous.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by JokeKah (talk • contribs) 03:46, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe Shoebat is ridiculous ? And the "Criticism" section is not long enough--Grafite (talk) 15:00, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: This is why having a Criticism section is considered bad form—when it contains most of the article body, it no  longer serves an organizational purpose. Also, some readers disregard such sections as a WP-sectioned stockade for malicious "hater" edits.  While the current subdivision of that section helps, this might still be best reformulated as a career chronology, or just into a few more sections without the Criticism supersection. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:05, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article needs to be cleaned up somehow 

message: I know that this source is not very credible, but Walid Shoebat claims that several media outlets in the Mideast have claimed that the Libyan government, upon interrogating (alleged) suspects in the Benghazi attack, found (alleged) links to the government and/or political party of then-Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi. Normally, I would just dismiss these allegations, except that the source provides an actual photocopy of an (alleged) document by Libyan authorities. While his conspiracy theories are not credible, I could not find an English or other source disputing the reliability of the Libyan sources and/or the claims tying Morsi to the Benghazi attack. The claim is obviously repeated by right-leaning critics of the Obama administration (see the manifold conspiracy theories on Benghazi), but since these theories are so widely repeated, I would like to see whether any source has specifically debunked the claims by Shoebat re: Egyptian complicity in the Benghazi attack. CapeVerdeWave (talk) 01:38, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Walid Shoebat and Benghazi claims 

message: What does "According to Shoebat, upon his release" mean? Release from what?Royalcourtier (talk) 06:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Release? 

message: This guy has a website. And I think it's worth mentioning because he's a complete lunatic. His site is full of anti-gay, anti-women, bizarre apocalyptic and often violent rantings.
Witness the horror.http://shoebat.com/2015/07/11/jesus-christ-prefers-the-confederate-flag-over-the-american-flag/http://shoebat.com/2014/05/29/christianity-religion-peace-religion-war-combat/http://shoebat.com/2015/07/26/its-times-like-this-when-sharia-law-doesnt-sound-like-such-a-bad-idea/http://shoebat.com/2014/11/14/feminist-infiltration-american-churches/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.187.216.93 (talk) 07:23, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  His website 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Walid Shoebat. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20061120003747/http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/12min.htm to http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/12min.htm
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Right now, the first line of the article reads "Walid Shoebat (Arabic: وليد شعيبات‎‎) is a Palestinian American, born in the West Bank to an American mother, who converted to Christianity from Islam." In my understanding, especially after looking at the sources cited, this is totally reversed -- he switched from Islam to Christianity. Sorry for posting on the talk for something so little -- I just could tell this is a contentious page and wanted to go through the correct hoops.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbiadig (talk • contribs) 21:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  The First Line 

message: The Personal views section of the article could usefully include information relating to Walid Shoebat's self-confessed homophobia as illustrated here http://shoebat.com/2017/07/15/only-homophobes-will-make-it-to-heaven-and-all-non-homophobes-will-end-up-in-hell/. Also it should be noted that the Shoebat website actively supports extremely transphobic attitudes as illustrated here: http://shoebat.com/2017/07/10/children-in-britain-are-being-sent-to-clinics-to-be-told-that-they-are-transgender/.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andyjwright1954 (talk • contribs) 11:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal views 

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101222221143/http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/6/ to http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/6/
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thread_title:  External links modified