Talk:Battle of Khaybar/Archive 1

message: Salman01, "the Muslims" is not specific. Which Muslims? You? The Ottoman Empire? That is why I wrote, "Muhammad and his followers." The link brings one to the page of the prophet in case anyone is confused. This is similarly why "The Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza" is preferable to "the Jews." Please do not revert without joining discussion.Timothy Usher 01:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "The Muslims"

message: This article is nowhere near new! I've worked on this months back and this article is so last year. Please check the dates before posting in the front page as a new article (DYK entries have to be no more than 5 days old). This article was created in 2005. please check the dates to avoid such a happenning in the future. Thanx. Idleguy 02:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was stubbed not so long ago, because the article was a copyright violation, lifted directly from an Islamic site (and unsourced at that). The current version was expanded from the stub only a few days ago, and appears to be based upon Ibn Hisham.Timothy Usher 03:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  DYK candidate? Who posted this? 

message: This page was gamed onto the DYK list; reverting to keep the notice up is a farce, and will not be tolerated. — JEREMY 09:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Gamed = promoted under false pretences. It was in clear violation of the rules for DYK, and inaccurate statements were made in order to misdirect others not to recognise that fact, and thereby allow it to be promoted to the front page. — JEREMY 10:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What inaccurate statements? Help me, I honestly don't know who/what you're talking about.Timothy Usher 10:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

text: We're trying to avoid people coming to the mistaken impression that this had legitimately been a "Did You Know" article. — JEREMY 10:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The notice didn't make any claim of legitimacy, only that it appeared on DYK. Why is it important that this fact not appear on the talk page? What's the downside?Timothy Usher 10:19, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What, people being misled isn't enough of a downside for you? It's currently off; please justify any replacement of the banner here first. — JEREMY 10:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course it'd be terrible to mislead people. But how is a note that it appeared on DYK misleading?Timothy Usher 10:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Talk page reversion

message: Looking through these excerpt of Ibn Ishaq , there's a lot here, about Safiya and her poor husband that might be added.Timothy Usher 09:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Safiya

message: Can anyone (an admin, perhaps) explain to me why the edit history of this article looks (in part) like this:
# (cur) (last) 18:11, 6 May 2006 Pecher m (→Massacre of Banu Nadir - fix wikilink)
# (cur) (last) 18:09, 6 May 2006 Pecher (unstubbing)
# (cur) (last) 03:49, 1 May 2006 Timothy Usher (rv from totally unsourced, totally POV)
# (cur) (last) 01:11, 1 May 2006 Salman01
# (cur) (last) 15:30, 6 April 2006 Pecher (not tribe, simply Jews living their)
# (cur) (last) 13:13, 6 April 2006 Timothy Usher (Khaybar, not Bani Qurayza - let's keep our victims straight)
I know admins can delete selected edits from an article's history, but how have these gotten shuffled? — JEREMY 10:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's the problem? It looks in order to me. Note 6 May v. 6 April.Timothy Usher 10:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: HeHe. Nice one. Even I was ponding over the puzzle posed by Jeremy for a few moments until Timothy pointed out. Optical illusion. Our eyes do play tricks, don't they :-) Idleguy 13:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoa. OK, I think I've spent too much time staring at wikipedia pages. (I checked the diffs too; they support the discontinuity.) My bad; please ignore. :) — JEREMY 13:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Extremely odd history

message: Interesting (and somewhat ironic) footnote to history, but not sure where in the page to put it. - just found out about fol book: (review from ebscohost)
"The Turkish Battle at Khaybar. By Esref Kuscubasi. Trans. and ed. by Philip H. Stoddard and H. Basri Danisman. Arba Yayinlari, Istanbul, 1999. Pp. 296. Map. Illus. Notes. Appendices. Index. [Available in the Society's Library.] 
Esref Kuscubasi (1873-1964) was described by T E. Lawrence and by King Abdullah I of Jordan as in turn brigand, assassin, adventurer and revolutionary. He certainly had a chequered career in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, serving at different times both the Sultan Abdulhamid and the 'Young Turks'. In 1917 he was sent by War Minister Enver Pasha on a foolhardy mission to carry gold to the Ottoman troops beleaguered in Yemen by the Arab Revolt. Before even reaching its destination his small band was surprised by a much larger beduin force under Amir (later King) Abdullah. The ensuing battle at Khaybar in the Hejaz was a catastrophic rout from which Esref emerged bloody but unbowed. The gold was purloined." Bridesmill 02:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2nd Battle of Khaybar 

message: Cite moved so that it no longer includes last sentence in the para. Although Stillman many have discussed concept of pogroms in this context, to use this line is cherry-picking and applying a very blatantly biased (if admittedly scholarly) POV. It is this type of rhetoric - equating or implying that it was all a big pogrom - that takes it out of historical context. It was a war fought 1000 years ago, when moralities and realities were different - to attempt to understand it in terms of modern theoretical constructs will result in nothing but strong antipathy, apologism, and strong reaction - in other words, this page will never achieve anything more than POV battleground. Let's all recall that this is about more than defending the faith - it is about objective recording and reporting of history, with the aim of developing understanding, whihc involves allowing each other to state our context ('X calls him a martyr' and 'Y calls him a criminal', rather than 'there is dispute over his status', which nobody learns from). And please don't play the WP:NOR to this - synthesis of multiple bodies of work is not OR. Given the complexity of the conflict within which this tiny article conflict is taking place, a dose of realpolitik, pragmatism, humility, & submission by all is probably not misplaced. (except for me of course, I'm not biased) (kidding) 
 Bridesmill 01:56, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, first it is the Encyclopaedia of Islam, not Stilman, who makes the reference to pogroms. Secondly, we have no reason to hide the connection made here. I've read your comment in its entirety several times, but I cannot clearly see your reasoning behimnd hiding the pogrom connection. If you disagree with this specific scholarly source; it's up to you, of course, but in this situation any editor will have to, as you put it, play the WP:NOR card, as you don't see your "synthesis of multiple bodies of work" anywhere in your edits. Pecher Talk 11:03, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Stop the hysterics, please. I entirely fail to understand why you call analysis done by scholarly source BS. The point made there was that Muhammad, like many people after him, saw Jews as a valuable source of loot. Your cries about sub-humans confuse Nazi ideology with the older pre-Nazi anti-Semitism and perhaps betray a failure to read the article, which says that "...Muhammad's attacks against the Jews, first in Medina and then in Khaybar, had economic roots similar to those which brought about persecutions and pogroms...". So, please do not ascribe to the article something that is not there on Muslims are inherrently evil and Jes being sub-humans. Pecher Talk 15:56, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Why not? The word "persection" is also emotionally charged, but nevertheless descriptive. Pecher Talk 16:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: We would have done the same? That seems unfair. There were peaceful people then as well as now, but, as now, they didn't make the headlines. Were the history-makers of the twentieth century less morally outrageous than those of the seventh? The twentieth century is close enough for us to recognize where they departed from prevailing morality (as criminals do, by definition), rather than dismiss it as "that's the way people were back then." Not sure. But I'm as wary of that answer as I am of straightforwardly applying contemporary standards, as both are premised to some degree upon projection.Timothy Usher 20:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: These are not relevant issues to discuss here. We are not supposed to make value judgments on Wikipedia, nor is it productive to ponder what we would have done, had we been Muslim Arabs living in Medina in the 7th century. Let's stop at this point because this is not what talk pages are for. Pecher Talk 20:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: You're confusing logical conclusions with value judgments; the comparison with pogroms is the former, not the latter. Pecher Talk 21:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Firstly, you've got to be kidding - categorizing something from 1000 years before the first use of the word pogrom as a pogrom is not a value judgement???? We cannot just put values and politics of 17th C Euroope into that time period, and we don't need to. 'Khaybar related to pogrom' is a logical leap of huge magnitude. Why this obsession with what is (in English) an emotional word which is bound to raise hackles, when the same concept can be expressed in a neutral fashion? The fact that it is in a cited reference does not make it a fact - it is a published opinion, and in this case used in a cherry-picked and out of context fashion. Insistence on using it is I would suggest either due to a (acceptable) lack of grasp on a nuance of the language, or an (unacceptable) purposeful belligerence. We don't need to use it to get the point across, so why use it when all that does is inflames people.Bridesmill 22:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: No, a value judgment is when we say that something is good or bad, or that something should or should not be done. Neither is the case here. Wikipedia is not bound by political correctness and we are not supposed to protect people's feelings. It is somewhat diferent in Canada, as far as I know, but not here. Pecher Talk 13:32, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pogroms

message: Pecher, what is your reason for removing disputed tag from the article. Isn't the article disputed? --Aminz 22:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's disputed, factual accuracy or neutrality? The latter is more subjective, but on the former, there seems to be only one fact in dispute, re Muhammad's motivations as per the Stillman reference. Now that you've added the hedge, the "totally disputed" tag is unjustified. Accordingly, I will downgrade it to the neutrality tag.Timothy Usher 22:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of disputed tag