Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Recent evidence

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This is a page of evidence to support the RfC/U at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85.

The following four items are collected from just the seven days after 11 April 2010, to illustrate that this editor's behaviour has not changed since the point at which I complained about their use of sources. Some of these may not be as serious as the ones on the main evidence page, but I would like to show the scale of the problem.

Gallup poll

— 22:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

A 2007 Gallup poll has shown that the majority of Muslims in both Muslim-majority countries (Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia) and non-Muslim countries (France, Germany, United Kingdom and United States), including both men and women, are in support of women having equal rights, both socially and politically, provided a woman does not lose her Islamic right to keep her own earnings to herself and share half her husband's earnings.

The source cited for this was:

Rheault, Magali (21 December 2007). "Saudi Arabia: Majorities Support Women's Rights". Gallup.

But this summary is thoroughly wrong both in detail and in its overall interpretation:

• The source says nothing about it being specifically Muslims who were polled: the information at the end of the web page indicates that it was just a random poll in each country (which in the European countries would clearly not lead it to be a poll of Muslims).
• The poll taken in the European countries was not the same as that taken in the Muslim countries: in Europe the question was about just wives' wages and nothing was asked about equal rights.
• Further, the source does not say that the majority of people in Germany and England were in favour of this: rather only 38% and 34%, respectively, agreed in those countries.
• This poll was not carried out in the United States at all but rather an entirely different poll, which is mentioned elsewhere on that page, was carried out there.
• More worryingly, the editor's claim that the poll was about whether women should have equal rights provided that she get to keep her wages and so forth, simply was not asked by this poll in any country. These were two entirely separate questions on the poll without any dependence on one another.
• Lastly, the editor has over-simplified Rheault's important qualification that this is simply not about "equal rights, both socially and politically". In an Islamic context to have "equal legal rights" is not the same as equal rights as commonly internationally defined:

But "equal legal rights" do not mean men and women have the same rights. In Islamic family law, rights reflect the different obligations of the wife and husband, acting as partners in life. The issue of "same rights" in Muslim communities could actually mean a loss of rights for women. For instance, in some Muslim societies, women would have to share their wages with their husbands, which they do not have to do under current law, as interpreted by Muslims globally. Such nuance is frequently overlooked in conversations about gender parity in the Muslim world.

Islam and Communism

— 14:56, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

Some Orientalists believe that there exist a number of parallels between Islamic economics and communism, including the Islamic ideas of zakat and riba.

The source cited for this was:

Lewis, Bernard (January 1954). "Communism and Islam". International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-). 30 (1): 1–12. ISSN 0020-5850. JSTOR 2608416.

But the article simply is not about Islamic economics and makes no such claim about parallels between Islamic economics and communism. The editor clearly missed the point of the article which is that Lewis believes that Islamic societies and communist ideology, despite a number of parallels, are incompatible. And of course, the article does not mention either zakat (alms giving) or riba (usury).

Founding father of secular thought

— 10:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

Averroes has been described as one of the founding fathers of secular thought in Western Europe.

The source cited for this claim is:

Fakhry, Majid (2001). Averroës (Ibn Rushd): his life, works and influence. Oneworld. ISBN 9781851682690.

But this source makes no such claim. The closest it comes to that is in the following passage:

It can thus be seen how the secularist thesis, defended by both Dante and Marsilius of Padua, who based it explicitly on Averroes' teaching, marked the dawn of a new phase in European political thought. This new secularist phase rested ultimately on the concept of the primacy and autonomy of reason, which both in its 'possible' and active capacity, as Averroes had taught, was truly universal. (p. 137)

For more examples of this editor's "father complex", see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Evidence#Father_complex.

Islam and slavery

— 22:30, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

This edit added the claim that:

However, this was usually the exception rather than the norm, as the vast majority of labour in the medieval Islamic world consisted of free, paid labour.

The source cited for this claim is:

Phillips, William D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Manchester University Press. pp. 76–77. ISBN 9780719018251.

But the most that that source says about free labour is that:

The majority of the slaves in the Muslim world were put to work as domestics and business assistants or used as sexual partners. Agricultural and industrial labor was generally free. (p. 75)

land [...] was worked by free peasants, by hired labour, or according to sharecropping arrangements (p. 76)

Neither "free peasants" nor those working "according to sharecropping arrangements " are in any sense "paid labour"; so to claim that the "vast majority of labour" was "free, paid labour" is to misrepresent the source and, in all probability, is simply false.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The contents of the above archive were cited as evidence in a request for comment on a user. I believe it should be left in the state it was in at the conclusion of the RFC/U.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:58, 23 March 2011 (UTC)