Nada,
I'm not sure you're representing the position accurately of Shiite muslims. Far from all muslims take offense. Many, but not all Sunnis do, and some, but not nearly as many Shiite's do. Furthermore, I'm not sure I believe you are in a position to state that there will be no demonstrations. There have already been demonstrations, as reported in the news. You cannot predict the future, and is both folly and dangerous to give assurances that you have no ability to uphold.
Finally, I would appreciate that the conference organizers not dismiss something that potentially could affect the safety of conference goers, and not assume that skepticism and criticism equates to poor knowledge of Islamic belief, or uncivilized behavior. That was dangerously prevelant within the Alexandria bid team during the Wikimania bids, it's dangerously prevalent in Egypt's demonstrations (and official state action, no less) today, and it seems borderline prevalent in the tone of your post.
When the government of the country that we are hosting a major conference in, completely bans the sale of foreign newspapers for displaying pictures of Muhammed, and chastises the ambassadors from other countries for doing so, we have every right to be concerned about the status and safety of Wikimania. And we have every right to express our dismay in the heavy-handed censorship displayed by the Egyptian government, censorship which is fundamentally opposed to Wikimedia principles.
-Dan On Feb 20, 2008, at 6:26 PM, Nada RADY wrote:
Dear all, I’m Nada, one of the organizing committee in Egypt, and I'd like to give some comments on the issue brought up here, as I can see some points are misunderstood from some parties.
Firstly, I’d like to clarify why there was that ‘strong’ reaction towards the pictures being published on Wikipedia’s article, it’s just because Prophet Mohamed is considered the most complete human being ever created and that belief exists at the heart of all Muslims. Pictures of him mainly when not even close to reality being drawn by painters ages after he died, is widely rejected among Muslims (Sunni specifically), for example, I have never seen those drawings but on the pages of Wikipedia! And I think that major part of the Egyptian people and Islamic countries will think of the issue in a much different way than you do see, I hope you got what I mean.
Here in Egypt, We shall not be expecting any demonstrations before or even during Wikimania, and we can just assure you that those circumstances won't harm the event activities or personals. What have made me say so is our experiences in previous conferences that may have had much stronger contradictions with Egyptian attitude.
Finally, I would appreciate that we won’t make a big deal of this issue if we’re all looking forward for the success of this conference, I hope this would be resolved in a civilized way on this mailing list that reflects good knowledge about Islamic beliefs and freedom of speech in the same time, which don’t contradict at all with each other if both are understood well.Best Regards,Nada Rady _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l