Talk:History of concubinage in the Muslim world/Archive 4

Mcphurphy reverting without any discussion once again
This article was protected, and during that time Mcphurphy stopped responding on this article's talk page. For example, in section Talk:Concubinage_in_Islam two different users opposed Mcphurphy's removals, yet Mcphurphy didn't even bother to respond. As soon as the article becomes unprotected Mcphurphy starts reverting without leaving any message on the talk page. This is getting annoying.VR talk  15:19, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Multiple users including and the Silverstin guy above objected to the mass removals of sourced content above. Please adhere to the WP:STATUSQUO. Mcphurphy (talk) 02:59, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:STATUSQUO would be to preserve the long-standing version. That version was stable for like a month before you made contentious changes. The ONUS is on you to seek consensus.VR talk  15:18, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I am getting tired of repeating myself over such dishonesty. The WP:STATUSQUO is the one before you and the disruptive banned editor Arsi786 started making contentious removals after 17 May over the objections of multiple editors including, , , . The WP:ONUS was always on you since you were the one making contentious new changes. And you even failed to get consensus for your mass removals. Mcphurphy (talk) 22:12, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Welp, I wanted to make some non-dispute related edits (which would probably still get reverted), but can't because of this edit war. Mcmurphy, I note that you are avoiding certain questions like Silversteins question above and simply trying to gain support for your edits by canvassing. In the future I may be making be making some additions to Smiths texts to make his actual views more prominent instead of the current misrepresentations and selections of his work as well as adding to the modern Muslim views section by readding both my own unexplained, long deleted edits as well as Silversteins edits. Other additions may include Professor Brown's views for which there is no objection.
 * Plus I note you're starting to drop the mention of banned and disruptive sockpuppeting editors who supported you and this article and relying on editors who only joined recently without much input. Even though I have not editwarred, you can count me in as editors who believe that the latter version is more NPOV, even if it's not perfect. There is really no consensus for any version of the article. It was even stable for around a month before your sudden edits. As soon as the article was created objections were made by WilliamOR and followed by me which went unheeded while only Koreangauteng supported the article. 39.37.176.145 (talk) 16:05, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Reading the exhaustive discussions on this talk page between User:Vice regent and User:Mcphurphy, my conclusion is that User:Vice regent is trying to downplay the views that meanstream Islamic scholars have regarding Concubinage and sexual slavery in Islamic law so that the article somehow meets the 21st century standards on the issue. Meanwhile, User:Mcphurphy's version of the article remains true to the source. RegardsBalolay (talk) 11:25, 16 July 2020 (UTC)$banned user$
 * Balolay, I believe that everybody deserves a second chance but I cannot take your views here seriously considering your dishonest tactics over at slavery in Islam and find it hard to believe that you've checked the sources considering there're pretty hard to access (I should know). No offence but I would treat your continued input here as an own-goal and pretty ironic as well since I just noted that McMurphy was ignoring sockmaster supporters. In regards to your other edit here, there are many Islamic scholars with similar views. I plan to add some, not just Shakir when protection is lifted. Plus, what is with it with this horde of canvassing right-wing Indian editors on these articles? It may be rude to point out but it's rather confusing. 39.37.191.63 (talk) 16:02, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
 * God-dang it!!! The page was protected once again as I was making my non-dispute related edits... No matter, I can play the waiting game... 39.37.187.161 (talk) 14:55, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Modern Muslim views 2
Okay, so I've focussed on the Modern Muslim views and improved on three things. First I've provided a little background and sourced VR's past claims about slavery being abolished. Secondly, I've added the views of a few modern Muslim scholars (others can be added as well) and shifted Taqi usmani's views here.

The third thing I've changed is adding Kecia Ali's views in this section where her views are relavant and to some extent even contradictory to the text (or at least the implication in the text) given in the article. I believe this is giving her too much space but it's better to offer a holistic overview of her views rather than presenting the bones and leaving out the meat of her arguments. I can provide direct quotes here if necessary. In fact though I've resisted temptation to change other sections, I note that some of the things she claims actually contradict material in the article.

For example she claims that "Slavery was pervasive in the late antique world in which the Quran arose. Early Muslims were part of societies in which various unfree statuses existed, including capture, purchase, inherited slave status and debt peonage. Thus, it is no surprise that the Quran, the Prophet’s normative practice and Islamic jurisprudence accepted slavery.", yet the article contradicts her as much as it does Robinson. (pg 11)

This source says the exact same thing, noting "This kind of relationship was practiced among the Arabs before Islam and it was legalized during Islamic times with new elements and conditions". The source also has sections dedicated to the good treatment and freedom of slaves which Mcmurphy not only omits but denies as well. The material is too much to casually overlook.

Coming back to Kecia Ali while conceding that quasi-slavery practices are found in the Islamic world she decries the obsessive linkage of it to religious justifications and notes that it's even technically still found in the US constitutuion. claiming: "By focusing on religious doctrine as an explanation for rape, Americans ignore the presence of sexual abuse and torture in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and in Assad’s Syria by the regime and other factions in its vicious ongoing war. None of this is to deny the horror of the systematic rapes Callimachi reports or the revolting nature of the theology she describes. It is to point out that there are reasons why the story of enslaved Yazidis is one that captures the front page of the New York Times: it fits into familiar narratives of Muslim barbarity." and also notes that "early Muslim slavery (like early Muslim marriage) wasn’t particularly a religious institution, and jurists’ ideas about the superiority of free over slave (and male over female) were widely shared across religious boundaries."

I also note that some of the sources like Kecia Ali, Qureshi and Ayesha Chaudhry are involved in a fairly complicated, internal, progressive Muslim debate around the issue of concubinage and other issues like Mehr but the article simply sharpshoots their texts for qoutes that present a certain POV while carelessly (or carefully?) sidestepping the broader discussion, often even badly contradicting their own views (I can cite walls of text in this regard). While these sources do indeed offer criticism of the patriarchal and sexist nature of classical Islamic law, some of the content, even if properly represented (which it isn't) seems more suitable for an article like Postmodern Feminist criticism of classical Islamic law rather than an article for the exegetical overview of the topic of concubinage.

The HuffPo article is from Kecia Ali herself, who is a subject-matter expert so I believe it can be included. Also I'm assuming that Hazelton is just an inclusion of Kecia Ali's work. I've asked this before but why are the same citations presented in different ways, multiple times?

I realize that Kecia Ali's views are a bit over the place but, that's not a problem on my end. The article itself mishmashes her views from different works. For example Kecia Ali's argument against CAIR and Rabb Intisar have nothing to do with each other but are synthesized as part of an argument. My solution to offer is the only one I can think of, short of removing text.

Finally, I was unable to find Kecia Ali's criticism of CAIR on page 6 of Ali's book (would provide source but copyright. pg 6 is about positive attitudes to sex within Islam and a comparison with Christianity's negative views about it). So I replaced it with another source which says something similar. Now I do indeed recall Ali stating this somewhere else in a preface (can't find it for now and don't remember her using the word "dishonest") but it's not in the citation given. 39.37.190.80 (talk) 17:55, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The latest addition to Modern Muslim Views is fine. I don't object to it. Mcphurphy (talk) 23:55, 23 August 2020 (UTC)