On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Ragib Hasan ragibhasan@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that the images in question are considered/claimed to be important *only because* there are protests against them. This is a circular logic ... the more people protest, the more the "keeper"s of the image insist they must be retained in the article.
I think we need to disregard both the "protesters" and "keepers" and rather look at the scholarly importance/notability of the images. That should be the only criterion for inclusion or exclusion, rather than what any Muslim or Westerner thinks about the pictures. Retaining the images just because "Muslims want to censor it, so let's keep them" is wrong, and equally wrong would be removing them because "(some) Muslims don't like the images". If the images have been considered important/relevant in academic circles, only then they should be included. In other words, let's apply something similar to [[WP:N]] in this issue, rather than [[WP:IDONTLIKEIT]] or [[WP:ILIKEIT]].
--
Ragib
-- Ragib Hasan Admin, En-wiki Bureaucrat, Bn-wiki
PhD Candidate Dept of Computer Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 201 N Goodwin Avenue Urbana IL 61801
Website: http://www.ragibhasan.com http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/www
Err, that opening is certainly true - in any article where nobody's offended by topical relevant images, nobody objects and there's rarely a need to justify them. Nobody bothers justifying the the photo of Mexico City's skyline in [[Mexico City]], so there's no need to defend it.
There is a ... probably small minority ... of editors who're interested in whether the images are the most appropriate selection, layout and so forth ... they're probably not, but the current atmosphere makes it essentially impossible to hold any type of intelligent, honest discussion on the issue. It had been hoped the brew-ha-ha would blow over quickly and we'd be able to get to work - *sigh*.
Although those previously unfamiliar with the issue may not realise this, all these discussions and arguments have been replayed and replayed and replayed over the last .. couple years? I suppose - the eleventy-billion page mediation archive from ~1 year ago probably gives some flavour, and when the dust settled it was roughly in its current configuration which was tolerated because it wasn't terrible for quite a while - now media attention has stirred up a new flurry of interest, but the debate's the same - identical arguments are being rehashed again and again, and leading to the same places. It simply isn't correct to claim that images are being retained because they're offensive and we need to defend free speech - if no Muslims were offended by them, they'd be there and nobody would say word one about removing them.
If we take the image that'd been in the lead, although it seems to be bouncing around right now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Siyer-i_Nebi_151b.jpg is an Ottoman miniature illustration that was added to the epic of the life of Muhammad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siyer-i_Nebi, written in 1388, and in the late 1500s by order of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murad_III illustrations were added. This particular illustration was added by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakka%C5%9F_Osman (Osman the miniaturist), the chief miniaturist for the Ottoman Empire who set down a style school that persisted well after him. Today the image is housed in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topkapi_Palace_Museum in Istanbul. It is not some "random image". Of course, this is probably of better pedigree than most - the page must be semi-protected, since the images are bouncing around pretty fast, but I think only http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mohammed_kaaba_1315.jpg mght have a better claim to more historical noteworthiness, being the oldest surviving depiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Siyer-i_Nebi_298a.jpg is also from the Siyer-i Nebi, but is new and I'd guess unlikely to stick.
Cheers WilyD
WilyD