Talk:Judeo-Islamic tradition/Archive 1

My main objection to this article is not in the specifics of the content (which is pretty good -- I would stress the worship fo the same God, and the sometimes dynaimic exchanges between Jewish and Muslim scholars at particular times, e.g. the Golden Age), but with the nature of the article itself. I know of no such tradition, and if it exists it is, like most traditions, "invented" traditions that take on meaning at a particular time and place for particular reasons. So if this "tradition" really exists, the article should say more about who has written about it, and to what audience; who more generally uses the term, and to what ends. Slrubenstein

I think that the article pretty clearly sums it up by saying that it is a term used for discussing similarities between Islam and Judaism, but for good measure, I've added a list of examples of the terms Judeo-Islamic tradition and Judeo-Islamic for your reading pleasure. Silver Maple

RK: Please stop inserting neologism/newly coined phrase into the article until you can: Substantiate your claim. Explain why it is so important to say that judeo-islamic tradition is a neologism, and not (for example) Black hole or political correctness, which are used as typical examples of neologisms in the neologism page itself. Silver Maple

No one needs to substantiate a claim that a new term is, in fact, a new term. If you wish to assert that this term has existed for a long time, the onus would be on to you to prove this claim. (And if you wished to do so, I'd start with the Oxford English Dictionary. Its good for historical entymology.) I'd like you to know that this article is just like all our others; many Wikipedia articles state which terms are neologisms. You seem to think that this word is an insult; but it isn't. Please read the entry on neologisms. Its nothing bad! RK 21:07 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Would you be inclined to go label all neologisms, in the interest of fairness?

Yes, of course. In fact, more neologisms are being labeled as such by many Wikipedia contributors, in many articles, all the time. Have you read many articles in Wikipedia? You'll see this more and more each month. RK 21:07 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have no problem with you talking about the first known usage of the term, or with you saying (at the bottom) that the very existance of the word/phrase is disputed by certain people/groups such as yourself, but please substantiate your insistance that it is a neologism with something more solid than your opinion. Otherwise, I can see no reason to categorically assert that this phrase is a neologism (as opposed to the 10000 other words that have been invented in the last 20 years alone), and I think that it presents a biased POV to people who read this article. Silver Maple

But the thousands of other new words that have been invented in the last 20 years are also neologisms, by definition. Again, precisely what do you think that this word means? What bias do you think this term is promoting? RK 21:07 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I think Silver Maple could benefit from a little more context, and then perhaps we can resolve this issue to everyone's satisfaction. There was a period at Wikipedia where some contributors started creating articles that were basically personal essays on a variety of issues, and through which the contributors introduced words they themselves had coined. This still occurs, some times, but virtually all contributors I think reached the consensus that such essays were not appropriate for an encyclopedia. I don't want to speak for RK, but I suspect some of his strong felings have to do with this (it certainly is a concern of mine). I do not think there is any value to arguing over whether "all" new terms should be identified as neologisms or not. I think what is important is that we agree to two points that sometimes lead to blurry situations:

1. the nature of wikipedia allows us to present on much more current, cutting edge phenomena than other encyclopedias
2. yet we still want to be a good encyclopedia, with the aim of representing knowledge and not creating new knowledge.

The only questions now are

1. whether "Judeo-Islamic tradition" is the invention of some wikipedian, or a phrase some people out there really use. Silver Maple has provided some links that convince me that it is a legitimate term that non-wikipedians use, and merits an article
2. what should go in such an article? I do not think it matters one bit whether we identify the term as a neologism or not -- personally, I think including the point adds little important information, and that more information should go into the article even if we avoid the word neologism. As I tried to suggest above, I think it is important to explain (a la OED) to the best of our knowledge when the phrase first gained currency, and to say more about who uses the term, and why -- in short, the historical and social context of the phrase.

I disagree with Silver Maple that the article as it stands does so, and I continue to believe that adding such information would make it a more interesting, more informative, and more useful article. Slrubenstein

Ok, I am convinced that we don't need to mention that its a neologism. It would obviously be better to explain (a la OED) when the phrase first gained currency, and to say more about who uses the term, etc. RK 21:27 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The term "Judeo-Islamic" was in use by the mid-1960s, "Judeo-Christo-Islamic Tradition" by the mid-1970s. The term "Judeo-Islamic Tradition" was coined in Bernard Lewis's "The Jews of Islam". None of the terms are in OED3 --Imran 21:45 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This is very useful! I do not have any of Lewis's books -- but if you could find the exact citation and put it into the article, and even perhaps say a little bit more about how Lewis was using the term and why, I think you would really be adding a lot! Slrubenstein

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SilverMaple writes: "Unless you are Muslim, you can't make assertions about what _even one_ Muslim believes. You can only report what they say they believe. Better to simply report what Quran says since it is verifiable."

This could be a serious problem, SilverMaple. We certainly do know what Muslims believe. They speak their minds, they publish books, write essays, preach sermons, and have their own websites. And while we do not know what every single Muslim happens to be believe, we certainly do know what most Muslims believe. The same is true, of course, for Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc. If we were to adopt your stance, we would have to assume that every book on religion is unsupportable, and unreliable...but that is just not so. The entire subjects of history and sociology depend on the verifiable fact that we can learn (to an extent) what people believe, especially when they tell us what they believe! Your rewrite would lead to rewriting every article we have on religion....and on history and sociology. We need to revert this particular change. Also, I believe that the particular change you made, as it is phrased, is incorrect. The Quran does makes two contradictory sets of claims on this topic, and the Muslim community has eventually come to a consensus position on what it "really" means. The consensus position adopts the harsher view (i.e. the Jews lied about their own scripture). We can't quite attribute this POV to the Quran with certainty, because a historical reading of the text does not necessarilly support this view. But we can point out that this is how most Muslims read the Quran. RK 21:27 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

RK, many social scientists do not claim that we can know what goes on in a person's heart or mind (what they think or feel). As Silver Maple points out, what we do know is what people say they believe. By the way, this is another example of the point I made on the talk page on the scientific method -- many scientists, I wrote there, do not distinguish between the world and our representation of it, but for many social scientists and scholars in the humanities, this distinction is crucial, and it is crucial here. I have no doubt that people believe things (that is the real world). But I also have no doubt that I have no direct access to this. All my access to this is mediated through various representations. You yourself give a few -- people "publish books, write essays, preach sermons, and have their own websites." Empirically, we have access to these public representations. But we do not have access to people's thoughts and feelings. You may not think the distinction is important but I assure you that a good deal of important social science analysis relies on the distinction. It has been proven to most social scientists' satisfaction that what people say they "believe" often varies depending on the situation in which they asserted the belief, especially depending on the audience and the medium of expression. Now, this article need not analyze what difference audience and media have on the expression of Muslim belief. But it should at least be written in a way that is consistent with how social scientists analyze these things (RK, wouldn't you have the same expectation for an article on a topic covered by the natural sciences?). I fully agree with Silver Maple that the article should be clear, it is not what "Muslim's believe," it is what specific people have said or written, it is what is represented in specific texts or rituals. Slrubenstein

Uh oh. I think that we are at an impasse, because what you have just written is solipsim.

No it isn't

Its just deconstructionism in disguise,

No it isn't. That you write this suggests that you misunderstand what deconstruction is. I advise you not to use words you do not understand.

and I don't buy it. Do you really think that many Muslims don't have this belief,

You are distorting what I wrote. I wrote that our knowledge of what Muslims (or anyone, e.g. me or you) believe is mediated through representations. What we really (objectively, empirically) "know" is what they do, including speach acts.

and that all of their writings are lies, mistakes, or grossly uninterpretable?

This is not only not what I wrote, it has nothing to do with what I wrote. Here we see a clear example of what I wrote on the scientific method talk page -- many people, ignorant of social and critical theory, believe that when scholars distinguish between the world and representations of the world, they are saying that the world is not real (or, by implication, that representations are false). This is simply a misunderstanding, and I think it just reflects understandable gaps in people's education. Like I wrote on that page, there is a lot of physics I cannot understand either; many people misunderstand Einstein's theory of relativity or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, becuase they just lack sufficient familiarity with physics. So I am not surprised. Nevertheless, you are wrong. There is nothing in what I wrote that suggests that what Muslims write are lies, mistakes, or grossly iuninterpretable. I am saying that your own claims to interpretation are false, unscientific if you like. But this hardly means that no one can interpret. Just because you don't do it well does not mean that no one can do it well. This is "solipsism!" Buy a whole variety of scholars -- not just deconstructionists but hermeneuticians (no, not at all the same thing as deconstruction) lie Dilthey (history), Gadamer (philosophy) and Weber (sociology) have ways of interpreting people through their representations.

For one person, sure, it is possible. For a group, maybe. But considering the massive amount of books, essays, websites, lectures, sermons that many, many Muslims write...how can you deny it has meaning?

I did not deny that it has meaning; in fact, what I claimed -- which you systematically ignore (and I am guessing, although I admit it is onloy a guess, because of your ignorance of modern scholarship) -- that it is precisely these things that do have meaning.

For you to deny what they say is anti-Muslim, condescending, and not intellectualy justifiable. RK

Do you really believe that we can nothing about the beliefs of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, etc., and that we can only write about their books?

As I wrote abouve, I believe that all that we know about the beliefs of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, etc., is through their public representatiojns (books, speech acts, rituals, visual representations, etc)

Nothing about Americans or Europeans, nothing about Deomocrats or Republicans?

I just repeat what I wrote above.

That position would be the end of knowledge and the end of Wikipedia.

Wrong. It is the beginning of knowledge.

We might as well burn books if this is true, because they would then be unjustifiable hogwash.

Again, this is your own solipsism. If, as I claim, your claims about knowledge are meaningless, then, you infer, there is no knowledge or meaning. But RK, just because you are wrong doesn't mean that EVERYONE is wrong. In fact, it is possible -- and in this instance, the case -- that you are wrong and other peoplea re right, that knowledge and meaning are possible.

This is thge reason that most historians are painfully disturbed by deconstructionism. Frankly, no historian or scientist can work with a person who claims that no one else's words mean what they say. How can you expect anyone to work with you? As you claim, we have no direct access to your real thoughts. All our access to you is only mediated through various representations. Empirically, we only have access to your "public representations". But we do not have access to your thoughts and feelings!

No, you have access to my thoughts and feelings through my representations. One major reason for misunderstanding -- and I am thinking about the ways that the practices of other cultures have been misconstrued, the ways that plays and novels have been misinterpreted, and yes, the ways that you have misunderstood me and other wikipedians (and, to be sure, the ways I misunderstand wikipedians) is when we read into what others have written things that are not there. Sometimes, I grant, the text invites this; the text may be unclear so we are left to imagine what the text means. The problem occurs, as it has now, when the reader imagines s/he knows what the text means because the reader believes that s/he "knows" what the writer "thinks." The real solution is to invite the writer to produce more texts which may be clearer. I sure hope that is what I have done now.

So how can anyone trust what you write, or work with you?

The same way people everywhere work with one another -- we try to make sense out of people's "public representations" and respond apporpriately, sometimes make mistakes, and hope that through further communication we can approximate some kind of meaningful, constructive engagement. This is how culture and society works, RK. This is not deconstruction -- if you want to know the "science" behind it, I recommend Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Frame Analysis, as well as Harold Garfinkle's Studies in Ethnomethodology.

We can't - unless you commit the cardinal sin of deconstructionists, and claim that "Well, what I say is true about everyone else, but not about me and my writings!". It just doesn't wash. Do your words mean something, or not? if your words do mean something, then why don't other people's words? RK 22:24 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The Killing of History: Why Relativism is wrong

History is in the Making: Pragmatism, Realism, and Knowledge of the Past

RK: I don't really think we're at an impasse. Nobody is claiming that the holocaust didn't happen (as one of your articles suggested) or trying to rewrite history by saying it wasn't real. We, and you, are simply trying to put the information forward in an equitable fashion that respects the views of all parties. I'm not saying that you shouldn't speak about what Muslims seem to believe, or say they believe. Those kinds of statements are fair game. But how could you possibly, as a person who has never claimed to be Muslim, have special insight into the minds of Muslims? We need to justify our statements in a publically editable encyclopedia, using a reference or something. For example, if you had said: "According to al-Ghazali, Muslims believe...", and followed up with a quote from one of his books, then I wouldn't have had any objection at all. I would have probably checked the reference, added a few more of my own to support that statement, and possibly searched for other opinions as well. Why not?

This isn't really about realism or antirealism. It isn't about saying that things aren't real if we don't have a first-hand account. It is simply about presenting our sources. I have read your writings, and I know that you agree that this is important. Perhaps I just didn't express myself very well. Silver Maple

Perhaps I misunderstood. I am very much in agreement with this. RK 00:27 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Slrubenstein writes: "No it isn't. That you write this suggests that you misunderstand what deconstruction is. I advise you not to use words you do not understand."

I don't think that I misunderstand the word; it seems to me that you were not clear. Your most previous comments did present one of the more problematic deconstructionist viewpoints. At that time, you wrote that we can't trust what people write to represent what they believe; we only have access to representations of their beliefs, and that we need to confine ourselves to analyzing these representations, and not the people's actual beliefs. Well, as written, this attitude is precisely the view that we must struggle against! Fortunately, your new statements refute this point of view. Now that you present additional info on your POV, it seems to me that you do hold that people can clarify their statements, writings. In fact, you now say that one can do so to the point where we can understand someone else's beliefs, and that we are capable of learning about other people, and not just about their text representations. Fine by me. That is what I have been arguing. This is one of the big points I have brought up in more than one Talk page of late. Many people - including Derrida - clearly deny that we can ever learn the intent of an author, or ever learn about any group their writings. All we can really learn about is the text itself. That's sociological and historical solipsism, and it is hard (if not impossible) to communicate in writing with someone who has this view. Now that you add more information and clarification, it seems that you reject this view. RK 00:27 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What we call the "intent" of the author is itself a textual production; that seems to me to be an evident empirical fact and to deny it requires some sort of idealism I find unscientific.

But authors do have an intention when they write books or issue statements; people do mean something when they speak. You yourself have an intention when you write! This is "special pleading"; you obviously have intentions when you write, yet you deny that other texts were written by people with an intention. RK

Yes, most authors do have an intention when they write boks or issue statements. Nowhere have I denied this fact. Not only do I not deny this fact, I fully accept it. All that I wrote is that our knowledge of intent is itself mediated through representations; that intent is itself a textual production. These two claims are not only not mutually exclusive, they depend on one another.

But you did say just such a thing. If that isn't what you meant, then you need to be much more clear. RK 16:19 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Slrubenstein writes "many people, ignorant of social and critical theory, believe that when scholars distinguish between the world and representations of the world, they are saying that the world is not real (or, by implication, that representations are false). This is simply a misunderstanding, and I think it just reflects understandable gaps in people's education. Like I wrote on that page, there is a lot of physics I cannot understand either; many people misunderstand Einstein's theory of relativity or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, becuase they just lack sufficient familiarity with physics. So I am not surprised. Nevertheless, you are wrong. There is nothing in what I wrote that suggests that what Muslims write are lies, mistakes, or grossly iuninterpretable. I am saying that your own claims to interpretation are false, unscientific if you like. But this hardly means that no one can interpret. Just because you don't do it well does not mean that no one can do it well. This is "solipsism!" Buy a whole variety of scholars -- not just deconstructionists but hermeneuticians (no, not at all the same thing as deconstruction) lie Dilthey (history), Gadamer (philosophy) and Weber (sociology) have ways of interpreting people through their representations."

I think this misses the point. For centuries, many Muslims have written, taught and lectured about a specific doctrine, in this case, the doctrine of "corruption of the text"; many of them believe that the Jews and Christians deliberately altered their Bibles in order to hide certain truths about God's revelation. This is not a false interpretation; this is an acknowledgement of a very mainstream Muslim belief that is so pervasive, so well-written about, and so well-known to them and to scholars of Islam, that no serious debate on the subject exists. I simply can't understand why you held that I or others can't make a rather mundane statement about a well-documented position of the Muslim community. We don't need deconstructionists or hermeneuticians to read into texts to prove that many Muslims believe this... or to prove that Christians believe in Jesus, or to prove that atheists don't believe in God, etc. While we can't always take an individual or group at their word (for reasons you mention), when many individuals and groups give the same position, in similar ways, in many forums, with multiple opportunities for clarification, at a certain point it behooves us to say "Ok, we get it; people in groups X and Y do have this particular belief Z." That is all I am arguing. RK 00:27 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Once every year millions of devout Jews read/are told/say that disobedient sons should be stoned. And they have done this for thousands of years. Does this mean that "Jews believe that disobedient sons should be stoned?" I am not questioning your interpretation of the Koranic verse, RK, I am questioning the way you use words like "interpret" and "belief;" you do not have to go back to Derrida to see how tricky these words are, how we think we know what they mean, what it means to "believe" something, but as Wittgenstein pointed out it is seldom so simple. Slrubenstein

Just because someone reads a sentence in the Bible...or in the New Testament...or in a dialogue by Plato...or in a comic book... doesn't mean that they believe that this statement is a fact! It doesn't mean that they intend on carrying out any actions reccomended in the text! All it means is that for some reason, an author wrote a sentence, and that many years later people happen to read that sentence. Reading something doesn't mean agreeing with a literal interpretation of it. RK 17:37 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Historians and literary critics (and many scientists) care about why statements were written, what they originally meant in their original historical context, etc. The fact that sentences are sometimes hard to interpret is an entirely separate issue. (By the way, for others following this conversation, Jews do not follow the laws of the Bible as written. Please see the discussion on the oral law and the Mishnah to understand how Jews read the Bible.) RK 17:37 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

RK, this is my point (that in a way, you do agree with me, and if we do disagree about some things, there is still something we can agree on and thus use as a working basis)! If you believe this about Jews and the Torah, you should believe it about Muslims too. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Yes, historians and literary critics must be very attentive to context. Perhaps by now you have forgotten, but this was Silver Maples simple point which initiated this discussion -- that instead of putting in gross overgeneralizations like "Muslims believe," that we need to be more specific about the source and context. Given that you now seem to agree with this, I frankly wonder why you resisted it at first.

You are again arguing against a point that I do not hold. I never believed or wrote that one could read a few sentences in the Quran (or any other book) and then claim that all Muslims believe this. Rather, I stated the opposite; we should rely on the views of many Muslims, in many places. This allows us clarification and context. To have a reasonable degree of certainty, we must look at many statements, sermons, books, webpages, etc. But at a certain point a conclusion about what most Muslims believe on topic X can, and is, legitimately drawn. Muslims themslves say these things; so do historians of religion. RK 16:19 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Slrubenstein writes: "No, you have access to my thoughts and feelings through my representations. One major reason for misunderstanding -- and I am thinking about the ways that the practices of other cultures have been misconstrued, the ways that plays and novels have been misinterpreted, and yes, the ways that you have misunderstood me and other wikipedians (and, to be sure, the ways I misunderstand wikipedians) is when we read into what others have written things that are not there. Sometimes, I grant, the text invites this; the text may be unclear so we are left to imagine what the text means. The problem occurs, as it has now, when the reader imagines s/he knows what the text means because the reader believes that s/he "knows" what the writer "thinks." The real solution is to invite the writer to produce more texts which may be clearer. I sure hope that is what I have done now."

Hasn't this been my view all along...that we can learn what a writer believes (or what a community believes) from their writings (and speeches, etc.)? I was never talking about the view of one person, made as an off-the-cuff remark. RK 00:27 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

My point (really, Derrida's -- but many others, including non-deconstructionists), is that you can never be sure that your interpretation is really correct. Never. It does not matter whether you say "This is what Muslims believe" or "this is what the Koran says" (if you are giving an interpretation and not just a specific quote, of course) -- the point is, in either case, "misreading" is allways possible and almost always likely. But this does not mean that there is no point in listening to people or reading books. This is obvious to anyone familiar with deconstruction, which involves techniques for reading and interpreting and thus encourages the continued study of what people say and write. Those who think that the end result of deconstruction is some sort of nihilism, that the end result is that there is no point in talking to or reading the workk of others, simply do not understand it. Slrubenstein

Interesting. You deny a nihilistic point of view...while simultaneously describing a classic example of deconstructionist nihilism. That's like claiming you that you are certain there is no God, yet also claim to be agnostic. You can't have your cake and eat it to. How can you even have the nerve to disagree with me (or anyone) after making such a statement? You keep demanding that none of us can evey be certain we are correct...except, of course, the special case being you. That is the special-case pleading that deconstructionists always depend on! RK 17:37 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi RK, I changed athiest to agnostic in the previous paragraph, since the sentence seems to make more sense that way... Silver Maple

No, I deny a nihilistic point of view, and you insist on continuing to ascribe to me a nihilistic point of view. I think it is now clear what is goin on. You can only count up to two, or, to use a different metaphor, you see things in black and white. One is nihilistic, or one is positivist. If you are not one you must be the other. But I can count beyond two. I see many alternatives to both nihilism and positivism. I recognize now that, probably because of your lack of training in the humanities and the social sciences, that you simply cannot "see" the other possibilities. You do see that it is not "white" (positivism), so you conclude, no matter what I say, that I am talking about "black" (nihilism). And you are correct that it is not white, that I am not talking about positivism. But that does not necesarily mean that I am talking about "black," even thought that is the only other thing you can see. I see not only black, but blue, green, red, and so on. I am talking about one of those other colors, but it is all black to you. Too bad. But I guess this is just like someone who reads a little about physics and thinks entropy and inertia are the same thing, or that the heisenberg principle is the same thing as observer bias. A little learning is a dangerous thing! Too bad you don't care to learn more. Slrubenstein

Silver Maple tried to change the article. He makes the demand that unless one is a Muslim, one is forbidden to report what Muslims write, preach and believe. "Unless you are Muslim, you can't make assertions about what _even one_ Muslim believes. You can only report what they say they believe. Better to simply report what Quran says since it is verifiable" This, obviously, is incorrect. RK 22:49, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

When many Muslims write about their beliefs in books, articles, and preach these beliefs in their mosques, then we should not accuse them of being liars. When experts on Islam agree, and write about these exact same things in scholarly articles and in mainstream encyclopedias, again, we should not accuse them of lying. We are obligated to report these verifiable facts. Unfortunately, we have now a double standard: Some report the beliefs of Chrisitians, Jews, Buddhists, etc.,...but when it comes to Islam alone we suddenly have a new standard: We somehow can't write about Muslim beliefs. This double standard is wrong and unjustifiable. RK 22:49, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

By the way, here are some sources for the Muslim doctrine of "corruption of the text" (i.e. the belief that Jews and Christians deliberately altered their Bibles) The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, Ed. Cyril Glasse, 1989, p. 72. Also The Oxford History of Islam, Ed. John L. Esposition, 1999, p.330-332. Also, please run a Google search on this topic, and you will find dozens of Muslim websites quoting Muslim books and sermons. Frankly, I find it unlikely that all these Muslims are lying about their beliefs. Even if we feel uncomfortable with such beliefs, that is no reason to downplay them or hide them. RK 22:49, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Finally, it is incorrect to say that "The Quran says that the leaders of Judaism deliberately altered the true word of God by rewriting the Torah (five books of Moses) and the rest of the Hebrew Bible.... Some parts of the Quran attribute this to tahri fi-manawi, a "corruption of the meaning" of the words." Why is this incorrect? Because the Quran is ambiguous on this point, and the mass of Muslim writing on this topic is outside the Quran. Contrary to common belief, Muslims do not simply read the Quran and come up with their own interpretation; in practice Muslims live in Muslim religious traditions, such as Shiite, Sufi or Sunni, and each of these Muslim traditions has their own extensive and authoritative literature on the understanding of what the Quran "really means". And it is within this extensive literature that most disucssion of tahri fi-manawi takes place. RK 23:01, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)