User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/on applying Sharia to RK

Since User:RK seems to insist that I start a subpage specifically on what measures I advise to deal with him, I thought it fair to accomodate him, and to discuss what measures would be appropriate. As this debate started over his politics of Zionism, and that movement is opposed among other things to the imposition of Sharia (Islamic Law) over the former British Mandate of Palestine), it would be prudent to consider what Sharia would advise for RK.

I open this as a debate: anyone including RK may contribute, and may include any and all links to internal and external articles on this type of law.

Now, an uncharitable reading of the Qur'an might be said to advise cutting off the typing fingers of those who lie by typing text, but, I do not hold to that view of either sharia nor the offense. I think what we have here is rather a case of a small child who has learned one tactic, that of "shrill repeating" and launching a moral panic by trying to assert that he is somehow only the first of many victims of a similar sort. This works in a lot of places, most notably in legalist cultures with strong racist tendencies, but, it should not work on Wikipedia. Here, we should be not legalist nor racist, and, we should also be cognizant of one's ability to work with others.

RK has shown capacity to compromise even on core issues such as knowledge and ethics - although his discussion of these is uneven, there is ample evidence in talk:knowledge and talk:simple view of ethic and morals and talk:Gaia philosophy and even talk:Zionism is racism that he has the capacity to debate. It's his capacity to blur debate with misplaced text and to claim the right to decide where everything goes, to suit his political purposes, that we should be concerned about.

In Islam each culture has its own al-urf or "custom". If Wikipedia is a culture (it might be but it is not a society), or if it inherits this from the "civil Internet" or some such construction, then we must know more about this, and how the placing of texts is understood in that culture, before we are to characterize either the offense, or the response, which must end the offense.

Remember, the purpose of law is to avert vigilante action. If the action taken by the law is not seen as sufficient, then vigilante action may follow, and that will be less fair by definition, as it will go through no consistent process, and be more focused on revenge and punishment than on harms reduction.

And it is that that we seek here, and which Islam also historically sought.

Comments invited.


 * I don't like this page very much. Likening RK's behavior to that of a "small child" and refering to the (alleged) success of such behavior in "societies with racist tendencies" appears to me to be designed to seem reasonable, and yet actually be incendiary. (I could be wrong, though.) The whole "we" and "he" dichotomy isn't a very friendly rhetorical device either. Just my two cents. Cyan 06:19, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

User:EntmootsOfTrolls/Ban RK should link to Community case RK, since that's where it is now. But by tommorrow, it'll be somewhere else! Round and round it goes - where it stops, nobody knows! Martin 23:59, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)