Talk:Natana J. DeLong-Bas

Edits

Changed some of FreeRangeFrog's edits here. As far as I can tell, no one but DeLong-Bas (and I guess the student newspaper of the university where she works) claims Asharq Al-Awsat misquoted her, so it seems right to just state the facts ("DeLong-Bas was quoted ... A month later in the Brandeis University’s student newspaper The Justice she disputed the quote"), rather than state her claim as a fact ("DeLong-Bas was misquoted").

Another minor point, Stephen Suleyman Schwartz seems to have conservative connections, Michael J. Ybarra worked for the Wall Street Journal but was not bad mouthing MESA or otherwise involved in ideological disputes, as far as I can tell. --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@BoogaLouie: I think that's fine. I just really wanted to add the subsequent correction by DeLong-Bas to her quote. I'm not sure if it's an attempt at damage control or she was really misquoted, but either way we have to say what the sources say. Thanks. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 23:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Historical revisionism?

It's worth noting that this article is that of a historical revisionist. Irrespective of her academic work in the middle east, her ground view on Wahhabi entirely overlooks the following;

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab described followers of both the Christian and Jewish faiths as sorcerers who believed in devil worship, and cited a hadith of the prophet stating that punishment for the sorcerer is `that he be struck with the sword.`[56] Wahhab asserted that both religions had improperly made the graves of their prophet into places of worship and warned Muslims not to imitate this practice.[57] Wahhab concluded that `The ways of the people of the book are condemned as those of polytheists.`[58]

It appears the mysterious agenda of 'people of the book' living in peace is a fabrication of the delusional mind of a cultural marxist / cultural relativist. In the interest of neutrality, perhaps the editors of this article could attempt to bring this article more in line with reality? 121.211.33.244 (talk) 20:54, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

POV fork

An earlier version of reception for Wahhabi Islam ([1]) mentioned 3 positive assessment from book reviews with inline quotes, and 4 negative assessments with inline quotes (one from the same book review and the rest from quoted comments). This version has been moved to another article, and what's left here mentioned one positive review without quoting it, while quoting all 4 negative assessments, some with a more prominent quote template. This is an unjustified change of relative weight, leading to a WP:POVFORK. Eperoton (talk) 02:03, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

I didn't realise that the article had been split, so I assumed that you were removing well cited material. That said, I was only able to trace 2 positive reviews. The first to Middles East Journal and the second to Washington Report. The third positive review is linked to this link and does not appear to show anything positive about the book unless I have missed something.

On the other hand there does appear to be 5 negative reviews in the article. This would indicate that more prominence should be given to the negative reviews per WP:BALANCE. Also, other academics have criticised the book in this article such as Ahmad Dallal, who is a professor of Arabic at Georgetown University. MontyKind (talk) 06:46, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

There was more of them, and the question is also how they're presented. Creating a balanced summary of reception with contradictory reviews is hard. Sometimes, it needs to be done for the lead (and is liable to result in long disputes). In this case, it wasn't necessary to create this NPOV challenge. The article on the book started with a lengthy book report which keeps getting removed and restored, but the section on this book here stands on its own and is not unreasonably long, since it's by far the author's most prominent -- and controversial -- publication. I'll restore the original text (plus your additions), and if someone cares enough about its length to debate an abridgment, we can have that discussion and try to design a NPOV rationale for it. Eperoton (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

IP Editor deletion of cited text

An IP editor objects to the following:

DeLong-Bas has expressed the view that there is too much negativity towards Wahhabism in the West, and in her writings has argued that Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was "not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements", but

"a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream eighteenth-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon monotheism in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial treaty relations."

DeLong-Bas believes that extremism in Saudi Arabia "does not stem from" Islam, but from issues such as oppression of the Palestinian people, "Iraq, and the American government's tying [the hands of] the U.N. [and preventing it] from adopting any resolution against Israel, have definitely added to the Muslim youth's state of frustration."

In an December 21, 2006 interview in the London daily Asharq Al-Awsat, DeLong-Bas was quoted as stating that she did "...not find any evidence that would make me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the Attack on the Twin Towers". A month later in The Justice—the student newspaper of Brandeis University (where she was teaching at the time) -- she disputed the quote, stating: "Of course he did. He's the CEO of Al-Qaeda and the leader of their political agenda. All I claimed was that he didn't have anything to do with the logistics or the planning of the attacks themselves."

The version the IP editor would prefer is as follows:

DeLong-Bas has expressed the view that there is significant misinformation about Wahhabism in the West, and in her writings has argued that its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was "not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements", but

"a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream eighteenth-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon monotheism in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial treaty relations."

DeLong-Bas believes that extremism in Saudi Arabia "does not stem from" Islam, but from a variety of issues both domestic and international.

In an December 21, 2006 interview in the London daily Asharq Al-Awsat, DeLong-Bas was misquoted as stating that she did "...not find any evidence that would make me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the Attack on the Twin Towers". Confirming that Bin Laden knew of the attacks, but did not personally plan them, she asserted a month later in The Justice—the student newspaper at Brandeis University : "He's the CEO of Al-Qaeda and the leader of their political agenda. All I claimed was that he didn't have anything to do with the logistics or the planning of the attacks themselves."

Please could the IP editor explain how sources support their version. Wikipedia has a policy WP:Verify. So if statements are not supported by sources, they must be deleted. Toddy1 (talk) 22:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)