User talk:Andrewa/Surriyya

Why this page
There has been much discussion on the scope and titles of articles on the general topic of sexual slavery in Islam, including on my user talk page.

This is obviously a topical area on which NPOV is going to be hard to achieve.

My particular interest is in covering the topic described by the Arabic term transliterated as surriyya or surriya and possibly other variant spellings. I think this is the salient issue here.

I intend to allow the sections on my talk page to auto-archive in due course, and will then link to them from this talk page.

I think this will be a long term project. But it took eleven years of heated discussion before it was recognised that we had consensus to move the article New York (state) away from the base name New York. (See wp:NYRM.) And that despite there being, by my own (involved) assessment, consensus to move ever since the very start of the discussion. So things can take time, particularly where article titles are concerned.

We got there with New York, and we can get there with this. Andrewa (talk) 18:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Some POVs to avoid but perhaps describe
Obviously sexual slavery is seen by many today as disgraceful. But not by everybody. We need to give due weight and to source carefully. We should probably not even say in Wikipedia's voice that sexual slavery is evil, even if we have strong consensus that it is and sources that express this view too, and currently we do not do so. Instead we cite sources that say it is evil, and simply report what they say.

Foe example the article Sexual slavery in Islam currently reads in part ''The sexual exploitation of slaves by their owners was a common practice in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean societies, and had persisted among the three Abrahamic religions, with distinct legal differences, since antiquity. Islamic law has traditionalist and modern interpretations: the former allowed men to have sexual relations with their female slaves, while most modern Muslims do not consider slave concubinage to be acceptable in the modern world.'' That is well expressed in my opinion.

We do need to describe all relevant views, including those we personally find repulsive. We need to give them due weight. Andrewa (talk) 16:46, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Concubinage
The common translation of surriyya is concubinage, which seems fine according to most definitions of concubinage.

However, despite the Judeo-Christian heritage, the term concubinage in the English-speaking world has often referred to consensual relationships, notably priestly concubinage (currently a redlink) which referred to a (consensual) relationship between a supposedly celibate Christian priest and his mistress. So when I see the term concubine unqualified to describe what our article (quote above) terms slave concubinage my immediate reaction is that it is a euphamism. I do not find it recognisable as including slave concubinage.

The question here is, am I the only one? In deciding this we refer of course to English sources and the way they use the term. We go by common use rather than by any definition, however scholarly and authoritative.

So, is the term concubinage recognisable in English as including slave relationships? Or does it suggest a consensual relationship, which surriyya is not and never has been?. Andrewa (talk) 18:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

ISIL
Surriyya is of course in the news because it is reported to be currently practised by some Moslems, notable ISIL and some suggest by the Taliban. Andrewa (talk) 18:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)