To get to the heart of the matter, it is worthwhile to understand why portrayals of Muhammad are haram, forbidden. People are claiming that it is because Islam prohibits human images in general. But this is only partially true. In the PDF I cited above, (p. 9) it explains that: "For a Muslim, the Prophet epitomizes the perfect man whose worldly attributes cannot delineate his spiritual ones. In Islam, no way can the shell of a body describe the person …" It’ s not simply some edict to prevent idolatry. It is a belief that no image can adequately portray the greatness of the man. By comparison, imagine the uproar if we were to depict the Crucifixion with an overweight Jesus with acne and a bulge in his loincloth, while Mary Magdalene mourns in fishnets and a corset. Whether you like the comparison or not, to a devout Muslim any depiction of Muhammad is like that. It cheapens him. So what do people do today? In 2007 I wrote a book about Judaism for kids as part of a seven part series about religions of the world. I checked out the companion volume on Islam, and in fact, there were no pictures of Muhammad there, even though he takes up about one-half of the content. It would be interesting to see how other reference works handle this problem. Is it a problem of POV? Sure, but there is also an inherent POV in insisting that pictures be used, i.e., "We reject the religious sensitivities of the Muslim community." So what is the solution? I don't know. I would like to think that the pictures would be permitted, but at the same time, I would hope that they really be needed, and not just stuck in the article to make it pretty and to piss off the Muslims. How do the pictures add to the article? Would the absence of certain images, accompanied by an explanation as to why they are absent, be more educational? Would the choice of only veiled images resolve the issue? Perhaps all the "explicit" images could be moved to a more scholarly article on the history of Islamic iconography. Like I said, I don't know, but this is, indeed, a valuable debate and discussion on tolerance—from both sides. It is best handled with greater sensitivity to the concerns of the Muslim readers, after all, they are certainly part of the target audience. Most important of all, it should not be perceived as an Us v. Them debate. That benefits no one. Danny
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With respect, I think the background information you provide is interesting and topical but not directly relevant. Whether and how groups of Muslims are offended is not at issue - it is clear that some are, and that removing the images is the way to solve their dissatisfaction. Of course there are many ways of removing or obscuring the images - we could even have a link to a subpage only of images and descriptions, separated from the main body of the article. The question we have not answered is still the most important question: Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience? My answer would be no. If there are other, editorial reasons for removing the content - fine. Even if the proposed reason was that not having the images, or having blank images, was more educational and provided a stronger message than the images themselves - fine. That isn't what is proposed, however, and editorial concerns are not the reason. Until that changes, a compromise seems unlikely.
Nathan
On 19/02/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
With respect, I think the background information you provide is interesting and topical but not directly relevant. Whether and how groups of Muslims are offended is not at issue - it is clear that some are, and that removing the images is the way to solve their dissatisfaction. Of course there are many ways of removing or obscuring the images - we could even have a link to a subpage only of images and descriptions, separated from the main body of the article. The question we have not answered is still the most important question: Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience? My answer would be no. If there are other, editorial reasons for removing the content - fine. Even if the proposed reason was that not having the images, or having blank images, was more educational and provided a stronger message than the images themselves - fine. That isn't what is proposed, however, and editorial concerns are not the reason. Until that changes, a compromise seems unlikely.
It doesn't seem very NPOV to modify the way content is presented because of the concerns of internal editors but not for the concerns of what is a much larger group of external users. Kind of plants wikipedia in the stuck up category.
Peter
On 2/19/08, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
question: Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience? My answer would be no. If there are other,
IMHO, yes. To do otherwise is to be pigheaded and out of touch with society. We're a global tool for a global audience. We have to respect audience sensitivities. When one day we have a featured picture which is pornographic or otherwise sexual, it won't be on the front page. No one really questions this. Why? Because it's offensive to most *editors* not just many *readers*.
Our NPOV stance is not compromised by showing a little sensitivity to our readership.
Steve
On 2/19/08, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/19/08, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
question: Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense
taken
by a subset of our audience? My answer would be no. If there are other,
IMHO, yes. To do otherwise is to be pigheaded and out of touch with society. We're a global tool for a global audience. We have to respect audience sensitivities. When one day we have a featured picture which is pornographic or otherwise sexual, it won't be on the front page. No one really questions this. Why? Because it's offensive to most *editors* not just many *readers*.
Our NPOV stance is not compromised by showing a little sensitivity to our readership.
Steve
No one really questions "that", because it is manifestly untrue. There has been more and less suggestive nudity on the front page a few times now, and no it was not "offensive to most *editors*".
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Nathan wrote:
Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience?
If someone put a picture of someone shoving a gerbil up their behind on the page for "gerbil", we'd remove it. So yes, we do modify content in response to (or anticipation of) offense from the audience.
Remember that hard cases make bad law. Many of the arguments for not removing the Mohammed pictures are needlessly absolute just because people want to make absolutely sure the Mohammed pictures are allowed, but aren't considering how this lack of flexibility can affect other things.
On Feb 19, 2008 11:54 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Nathan wrote:
Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience?
If someone put a picture of someone shoving a gerbil up their behind on the page for "gerbil", we'd remove it. So yes, we do modify content in response to (or anticipation of) offense from the audience.
Actually we usually do it because of the encyclopaedia; we tend to remove links to "BASDSITES" because they don't have a real relevance to whatever article they're insinuated into, and we remove pictures of people shoving gerbils up their ass because generally these aren't relevant to an article about gerbils that has no actual text concerning the act of shoving a gerbil up one's rectum.
Johnleemk
On Feb 19, 2008 12:35 PM, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 19, 2008 11:54 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Nathan wrote:
Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience?
If someone put a picture of someone shoving a gerbil up their behind on the page for "gerbil", we'd remove it. So yes, we do modify content in response to (or anticipation of) offense from the audience.
Actually we usually do it because of the encyclopaedia; we tend to remove links to "BASDSITES" because they don't have a real relevance to whatever article they're insinuated into, and we remove pictures of people shoving gerbils up their ass because generally these aren't relevant to an article about gerbils that has no actual text concerning the act of shoving a gerbil up one's rectum.
Johnleemk
Indeed, if we had an article on [[Gerbilling]], no doubt one of our selfless editors would provide a photo of the activity that'd be stuck front & center. It's just not very relevant to Gerbils, which is why it's not there. Similiarly with Muhammad, we routinely exclude images that we just don't find very relevant, like Blake's illustration of Muhammad in Dante's Inferno, which is just too tangentially removed (and if the goal at Muhammad was to offend people, rest assured that image would be included).
Cheers WilyD
If we had an article about Gerbelling, it would be easy for readers to discover that it's an urban myth. But that's neither here nor there.
A better example is the shock site Goatse, which we *do* have an article on, but which we *don't* illustrate (despite there being an obviously relevant image...).
On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 19, 2008 12:35 PM, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 19, 2008 11:54 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Nathan wrote:
Do we modify content on Wikipedia in response to the offense taken by a subset of our audience?
If someone put a picture of someone shoving a gerbil up their behind on the page for "gerbil", we'd remove it. So yes, we do modify content in response to (or anticipation of) offense from the audience.
Actually we usually do it because of the encyclopaedia; we tend to remove links to "BASDSITES" because they don't have a real relevance to whatever article they're insinuated into, and we remove pictures of people shoving gerbils up their ass because generally these aren't relevant to an article about gerbils that has no actual text concerning the act of shoving a gerbil up one's rectum.
Johnleemk
Indeed, if we had an article on [[Gerbilling]], no doubt one of our selfless editors would provide a photo of the activity that'd be stuck front & center. It's just not very relevant to Gerbils, which is why it's not there. Similiarly with Muhammad, we routinely exclude images that we just don't find very relevant, like Blake's illustration of Muhammad in Dante's Inferno, which is just too tangentially removed (and if the goal at Muhammad was to offend people, rest assured that image would be included).
Cheers WilyD
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Indeed, if we had an article on [[Gerbilling]], no doubt one of our selfless editors would provide a photo of the activity that'd be stuck front & center. It's just not very relevant to Gerbils, which is why it's not there.
Yet if I put a picture of a gerbil against a cloudy sky in the article on gerbils, nobody would say "clouds are irrelevant to gerbils" and take the picture out until someone removed the clouds from the picture. Relevance isn't enough; offensiveness matters.
Yet if I put a picture of a gerbil against a cloudy sky in the article on gerbils, nobody would say "clouds are irrelevant to gerbils" and take the picture out until someone removed the clouds from the picture. Relevance isn't enough; offensiveness matters.
It's not just relevance, it's prominence. The clouds wouldn't be prominent in the photo, they're just in the background. A person engaging in "gerbiling" would be very prominent. The fact that some people could be offended by it is irrelevant. A photo of a building with a small gerbil just visible in front of it wouldn't be acceptable either, because the building is too prominent and the gerbil isn't prominent enough, but it's certainly not offensive (unless someone's religion is anti-buildings, which wouldn't surprise me...)
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Thomas Dalton wrote:
Yet if I put a picture of a gerbil against a cloudy sky in the article on gerbils, nobody would say "clouds are irrelevant to gerbils" and take the picture out until someone removed the clouds from the picture. Relevance isn't enough; offensiveness matters.
It's not just relevance, it's prominence. The clouds wouldn't be prominent in the photo, they're just in the background.
Then forget the gerbilling. Imagine it's a picture of a gerbil, but on the wall behind it is a poster showing a big penis.
We'd remove that, even though we wouldn't remove it if the poster had had clouds on it instead.
(Of course, the obvious response is that the penis poster is much more noticeable than the cloud poster *because* it's offensive, but in that case, you've basically defined prominence as including offensiveness.
Then forget the gerbilling. Imagine it's a picture of a gerbil, but on the wall behind it is a poster showing a big penis.
We'd remove that, even though we wouldn't remove it if the poster had had clouds on it instead.
Clouds are a natural part of a gerbil's habitat (ie. the outside world), posters of penises aren't.
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Thomas Dalton wrote:
Then forget the gerbilling. Imagine it's a picture of a gerbil, but on the wall behind it is a poster showing a big penis.
We'd remove that, even though we wouldn't remove it if the poster had had clouds on it instead.
Clouds are a natural part of a gerbil's habitat (ie. the outside world), posters of penises aren't.
You're just nitpicking the example. If the picture showed a gerbil in front of someone's computer monitor because that was where he happened to snap the picture, we wouldn't demand the monitor be airbrushed out, even though a computer monitor isn't naturally part of a gerbil's habitat. If it was a poster of someone's sex organs, we would. This is not because one is more "prominent", or because one is more "natural"; it's because one is offensive.
On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 7:10 PM, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
It is a belief that no image can adequately portray the greatness of the man. By comparison, imagine the uproar if we were to depict the Crucifixion with an overweight Jesus with acne and a bulge in his loincloth, while Mary Magdalene mourns in fishnets and a corset.
No, imagine the uproar if *someone else* made such a depiction a few hundred years ago, and Wikipedia included it an article. OK, now imagine how such an uproar should be responded to.
I don't see how the current image is well integrated into the article. It does seem to me like the image is currently mainly being kept there simply to spite those who don't want it there (or as a backlash against censorship, which is basically the same thing). But if the picture is somehow notable to this article, either in itself or as an example of a depiction which was typical in a certain culture/at a certain time (*), then I can see how it *could* be well integrated into the article.
(*) I don't know if this is the case or not. I've read a small bit of argument on each side of this, but most of the current debate seems to ignore this IMO key question. And I'd say the burden of proof in this particular case should be on those who want to include the image.
On 20/02/2008, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
No, imagine the uproar if *someone else* made such a depiction a few hundred years ago, and Wikipedia included it an article. OK, now imagine how such an uproar should be responded to.
In exactly the same situation but applying to the Jesus article, there would be no uproar, an ad-hoc coalition of users, admins and so forth would just appear and form a 'consensus' that that would not be permitted in the article. Generally when something ends up less offensive you get a lot less uproar than when it is, so no uproar.
I imaging that they would be much the same people that are currently trying to keep the Muhammad pictures in the article under 'consensus', but that's just my best guess.
In fact, if google is anything to go by, arguably it has already happened in real life. Googling 'jesus with an erection' gets more hits than 'images of muhammad', but even a link from the [[jesus]] article to [[Jesus with an erection]] is strangely absent ;-)
-- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.
On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 4:40 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
In fact, if google is anything to go by, arguably it has already happened in real life. Googling 'jesus with an erection' gets more hits than 'images of muhammad', but even a link from the [[jesus]] article to [[Jesus with an erection]] is strangely absent ;-)
The latter article is also strangely un-illustrated, despite there being an obvious illustration to include.
Stephen Bain schrieb:
On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 4:40 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
In fact, if google is anything to go by, arguably it has already happened in real life. Googling 'jesus with an erection' gets more hits than 'images of muhammad', but even a link from the [[jesus]] article to [[Jesus with an erection]] is strangely absent ;-)
The latter article is also strangely un-illustrated, despite there being an obvious illustration to include.
I just fixed that.
br